LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No......... . 

Shell-—.-. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JESUS AND JONAH 



I. Review of a Symposium on Our Lord's 
Remarks Respecting Jonah. 

II. Review of Prof. Driver on the Book 
of Jonah. 

III. Is the Story of Jonah Incredible? 

IV. The Three Days and the Three Nights. 



/ BY 

J. W. McGAEYET 

President of the College of the Bible, Lexington, Kentucky. 




CINCINNATI, 0.: 1 Hlfj t 
THE STAND AED PUBLISHING CO. 

Publishers of Christian Literature 



.M3 



Copyright, 1896, by 
The Standard Publishing Company 



TO THE EMINENT HEBRAIST, 

PI^OFESSOI^ WILLIAM HENF^Y GI^EEN, 

OF PRINCETON, 

THE ACKNOWLEDGED LEADER OF AMERICAN SCHOLARS THROUGHOUT 

A WHOLE GENERATION IN DEFENDING THE BIBLE 

AGAINST DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, 

THIS DEFENSE OF ONE OF ITS SMALLEST BOOKS, IS WITH 

HIS APPROVAL GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



The contents of this volume, with the exception 
of the dissertation on The Three Days and Three 
Nights, were first published in the Critical Depart- 
ment of the Christian Standard. They are repub- 
lished in more permanent form at the request of 
many readers, and with the hope that they will 
thus have a more extended circulation. If they 
shall cause any to more highly appreciate the inim- 
itable story of Jouah, and to have a firmer faith in 
the utterances of Jesus, they will serve the purpose 
for which both publications have been made. 

The Author. 
March, 1896. 



INTRODUCTION. 



BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM HENRY GREEN, 

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



The a titude of the Lord Jesus Christ toward the Old 
Testament is a source of great embarrassment to those who 
acknowledge him as a Divine Teacher, and yet are not in accord 
with his views on this subject. The puzzle is to reconcile the 
uniqueness of his person as the incarnate Son of God, the 
uniqueness of his claim to implicit reverence and confidence, 
aud his supreme authority as a Divine Teacher, with the admis- 
sion that he was or could be mistaken in any of his teachings, 
or that he ever gave his sanction to the errors or mistakes of 
others. The difficulty created by his attestation given to other 
parts of the Old Testament recurs in equal measure in the 
language which he uses respecting the Book of Jonah. The 
attempt to save his authority by minimizing the force of his 
words can neither be acceptable to him, nor can it answer its 
mistaken purpose. 

There is no reason for discrediting the Book of Jonah, 
unless it is to be found in the contents of the book itself. The 
extraordinary and supernatural occurrences here related can 
not be pronounced incredible by him who believes in the 
reality of the miracles recorded elsewhere in the Bible, unless 
their nature is such, or the occasion is such as to justify 
any one in affirming that they are mere freaks of power with 
no worthy end, mere prodigies, so out of analogy with all true 



viii. JESUS AND JO NAIL 

miracles, that it is altogether insupposable that God could, or 
wou d, have wrought them. But how can any one venture upon 
such an assertion in view of the fact that the Lord Jesus speaks 
of them without in any way suggesting that they were incom- 
patible with the character of God, and that he even puts the 
most marvelous of them in relation to his own stupendous 
miracle of rising from the dead, the one a sign to the Ninevites, 
the o.her to the men of Lis own generation. 



JESUS AND JONAH. 



I. A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 

I believe it to be universal with critics of the new 
school and their disciples, to deny the historical reality 
of the story of Jonah. Those of them who still believe 
in Jesus Christ, find it necessary to reckon with a state- 
ment from his lips, found in Matthew xii. 38-41. The 
passage seems to contain a positive affirmation of the 
reality of the two events which render the story of 
Jonah incredible in the judgment of most of these gen- 
tlemen, and they have felt the necessity of setting aside 
in some way its apparent force. The passage reads thus : 

Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, 
saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered 
and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh 
after a sign ; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of 
Jonah the prophet: for as Jonah was three days and three 
nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of man 
be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The 
men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this gener- 
ation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching 
of Jonah ; and behold a greater than Jonah is here. 

In demanding of Jesus a sign, the scribes and Phar- 
isees denied by implication that any of the multitude of 
signs which he had wrought were real signs ; and their 
demand was for one of a different kind. In answering 
that no sign should be given but that of the prophet 



2 JE&U8 AND JONAH. 

Jonah, he could not have meant that he would give no 
more of the kind which he had been giving; for he did 
give more of these, and in great abundance; but he 
meant that none should be given of a d fferent kind, 
except the sign of Jonah. This was different, in that it 
was wrought upon him, and not by him, and it was 
therefore a more direct and manifest exhibition of power 
from heaven. He explains what he moans by the sign 
of Jonah, by adding : "As Jonah was three days and 
three nights in the belly of the sea- monster, so shall the 
Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart 
of the earth." He then affirms, that because the men 
of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, and the 
men of his own generation repented not at his own 
greater preaching, the former sliall rise up in the judg- 
ment and condemn the latter; that is, cause them to 
receive a severer sentence. 

To the great mass of readers in every age and 
country, it has appeared that Jesus here assumes as a 
settled fact that Jonah was in the groat fish as described 
in the Book of Jonah, and that the Ninevites actually 
repented under the influence of his preaching. So obvi- 
ous does this appear that probably no human being has 
ever raised a question about it until after he has reached 
the conclusion that thoe two events are incredible. 
Then he must get rid of this obvious meaning, or deny 
the truthfulness of an assertion made by Jesus Christ. 
Many attempts at the former have boon made in recent 
years, and 1 propose, in this volume, to put every one 
of them to the test, so far as they have come under my 
notice. I do this, not because it is a matter of supreme 
importance in itself to know whether Jonah was 
swallowed by the 6sh and thrown up again, but because 






A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED, 3 

the question involves principles of interpretation which 
affect every statement made by our Lord with reference 
to events mentioned in the Old Testament, and in refer- 
once to the authorship of some of its books. It is really 
a question as to whether Jesus is to be received as a 
competent witness respecting historical and literary 
matters of the ages which preceded his own. If he is 
not, then the conception of his person and his powers 
which believers have hitherto entertained must undergo 
very serious modifications, even if it shall not be totally 
abandoned. One of the editors of the Biblical World, 
Professor Shailer Mathews, has felt the need of some 
efforts to settle this question, and in the number of that 
magazine for June, 1895, he published a symposium, the 
origin of which he states in these words: 

In order to learn how far this passage, with its explicit ref- 
erence, is held by the teachers of religion to set Christ's seal 
upon the stor}' of Jonah, letters were sent to a considerable 
number of representative pastors and teachers, asking them to 
give the readers of the Biblical World their opinions. The fol- 
lowing replies have been received in time for publication in this 
number (p. 417). 

Eight replies are published, contributed respectively 
by Lemuel C. Barnes, Pittsburg, Pa ; J. Henry Thayer, 
Harvard Divinity School; Franklin Johnson, Univer- 
sity of Chicago; William DeW. Hyde, Bowdoin Col- 
lege; Philip S. Moxom Springfield, Mass.; Rush Rhees, 
Newtown Theological Institution; A mory IT. Bradford, 
First Congregational Church, Montclair, N. J ; and C. 
J. H. Ropes, Bangor Theological Seminary. 

The editor sums up the result of the symposium in 
the following statement at the close of the series: 

It is not difficult to formulate the common belie! found in 
these statements of men who ditTer greatly in their attitude 



4 JESUS AND JONAH, 

toward many theological questions. It is this: Christ's use of 
the experience of Jonah as an illustration in no way gives his 
sanction to the view that the Book of Jonah is history (p. 430). 

It strikes me as rather singular that the editor here 
speaks of " Christ's use of the experience of Jonah/' 
when Jonah had no such experience. Does the editor 
here unconsciously betray the fact that the veality of 
this experience is so impressed on his own mind that he 
unintentionally concedes it while arguing against it ? 

I confess myself ignorant of the special qualifications 
of all these eight scholars, with the exception of Pro- 
fessor Thayer, of Hartford, whose reputation is inter- 
national; but I assume from the positions which they 
occupy, and from the choice made of them by the editor, 
that they are all men of competent attainments. I shall, 
therefore, treat their positions, and the reasons by which 
they defend them, as the best that can be said by men 
on their side of the question. 

Professor Thayer is the only one of the eight who 
says plainly what he thinks of the Book of Jonah. 
He says : 

In my judgment, the characteristics of the Book of Jonah 
favor the opinion that it is an apologue, or "religious novel," a 
composition didactic in its aim. How large a historic element it 
contains can hardly be determined (417). 

It seems from this that the book, though a novel, 
contains a historic element; but how large this element 
is, the Professor can not determine. As fact is some- 
times stranger than fiction, why not suppose that Jonah's 
experience in the fish is the historical element, and that 
the novel wss woven around this central fact? Nothing 
in the sentence just quoted, or in all that the Professor 
has said, conflicts with this supposition; and yet this is 



A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 5 

apparently the very thing of all in the book which he 
would most seriously doubt. 

While Professor Thayer can not determine the 
amount of historic matter in the book, Professor Hyde 
is equally unable to determine what Jesus meant by his 
allusion to it. He says : 

I should rather not commit myself to an exegesis of such a 
highly figurative passage as Matthew xii. 39, 40. A man's exe- 
gesis of such a passage as that is bound to be simply a reading 
into it of his gei eral conception of things. What it says is as 
plain as A, B, C. It requires no exegesis to determine that. It 
may mean any one of ten thousand things to as many readers. 
Just precisely what Jesus meant by it we shall never know (419). 

This Professor has certainly made a new discovery. 
It is the discovery of a fact which no man ever before 
suspected, the fact that this passage, the meaning of 
which has hitherto given commentators no serious diffi- 
culty, is so obscure that it may mean any one of ten 
thousand things to as many readers; and that what 
Jesus really meant, " we shall never know/' If we have 
to choose between ten thousand different meanings, I am 
afraid that we shall never know, sure enough. But 
perhaps the figures can be reduced a little, as in case 
of the man who was starting the song, — 

" My soul be on thy guard, 
Ten thousand foes arise." 

When he got to "ten thousand," the tune suddenly rose 
so high that he could not reach it; but after he had 
made two or three vain attempts, a neighbor whispered : 
" Put it down to Jive hundred and you can reach it" Per- 
haps, when our Professor gets over the excitement of his 
new discovery, he will put his figures down. Scientific 
critics should aim at exactness. 



6 JESUS AND JONAH. 

One of these writers, Mr. Moxom, cuts the Gordian 
knot, by pronouncing the remark about Jonah and the 
fish a spurious addition to Matthew's narrative. He 
says: 

I agree with Wendt that verse 40 is an interpolation. The 
sign to which Jesus refers in verse 39 is evidently the prophet 
preaching repentance. As Jonah preached to the Ninevites, so 
Jesus preached to the men of his time. There are coherency 
and force in the passage, verses 39 and 41 if we leave out verse 40. 
Verse 40 introduces a new idea, and one that is not strictly 
congruous with the others (420). 

I suppose that a meaning of the passage is implied 
in these remarks, which we might count as one of Pro- 
fessor Hyde's ten thousand. But we shall not dwell 
upon it; for the writer virtually takes back what I have 
quoted when he says in the very next sentence : "There 
is, as far as I know, no evidence that verse 40 is a 
gloss." I suppose he means, no evidence other than 
conjecture; and in this he is right. Having conceded 
this, he goes outside the laws of textual criticism in 
holding the passage to be spurious. A theory which 
demands the erasure of Scripture to make room for itself 
is self-evidently unscriptural. 

Only one of these writers, Professor Ropes, ventures 
to say explicitly what Jesus thought of the Book of 
Jonah. He says : 

I have no doubt Jesus supposed the Book of Jonah was his- 
torical, and have no objection to believing that he thought the 
same of the sea-monster miracle, though the evidence is less 
cogent. But the attempt to use such facts in the higher criticism 
controversy seems to be founded on a radically erroneous view 
of Christ's knowledge while on earth (429). 

According to lh : s writer, then, Jesus labored under 
a mistake in regaid to the book; for he supposed it to 



A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 7 

be historical, when it was not. Yet the same writer 
says in the next paragraph : 

Throughout his ministry, Jesus showed full knowledge of 
all that \ elonged to the revelation he brought, and exercised the 
prophetic gifts of insight into character and future events. 

This concession falsifies the preceding statement ; for, 
if Jesus showed full knowledge of all that belonged to 
the revelation which he brought, then he had full knowl- 
edge of all the Old Testament records, so far, at least, 
as he made use of them. But he did make a most im- 
portant use of the two principal incidents recorded in the 
Book of Jonah. He did suppose, says our professor, 
i hat this book was historical; and his full knowledge 
implies that what he thus supposed he also knew. He 
knew, then, that the Book of Jonah was historical ; and 
the attempt to use such facts as arguments in the higher 
criticism controversy is not, as he affirms, founded on 
''an erroneous view of Christ's knowledge while on 
earth." 

This writer has another remark, in the line of the 
first one quoted above, which I must notice. 

But, receiving his authority absolutely in the spheres of 
religion and morality, I do not see why his knowledge of the 
literary history of the Old Testament should have differed essen- 
tially from that of his contemporaries, any more than his knowl- 
edge of chemistry or astronomy (430). 

I could better estimate this remark if I understood 
the writer to hold that the Old Testament has no more 
connection with " the spheres of religion and morality" 
than chemistry and astronomy have; but if he receives, 
as he says he does, the divine authority of Christ in the 
spheres of morality and religion, then he must receive 



8 JESUS AND JONAH. 

as true tho c e records in the Old Testament on the truth 
of which Jesus based certain of his moral and religious 
teachings. 

This inconsistency in Professor Ropes is but an illus- 
tration of the fact which will again and again appear as 
we proceed with this symposium, that no man can accept 
the divine authority of Jesus, and reject his endorsement 
of the Old Testament, without self-contradiction. I 
wonder, by the by, how this Professor ascertained that 
Jesus was as ignorant as his contemporaries were of 
chemistry and astronomy ? 

Before I notice the direct arguments by which these 
eight writers attempt to make good their common 
position, I wish first to settle, if possible, what our 
Saviour meant by "the sign of Jonah," in the assertion, 
" No sign shall be given but the sign of Jonah the 
prophet/' Some of them take the position that Jonah's 
preaching to the Ninevites was the sign. Thus, Mr. 
Moxom says : 

The sign to which Jesus refers, in verse 39, is evidently the 
prophet preaching repentance. As Jonah preached to the Nine- 
vites, so Jesus preached to the men of his time. ... In 
brief, then, I take the meaning to be this: Jesus declines to 
furnish any sign in response to the demand of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, save the obvious one of himself preaching repentance 
to them, as Jonah preached to the Ninevites (420). 

To the same effect Professor Ropes says : 

The ques ion is: How did Jonah become a sign? Matthew 
replies, by the eea-monster miracle, analogous to Christ's r< sur- 
rection. But Luke xi. 30 may mean that Jonah w T as a sign 1 ke 
Christ, by preaching repentance in view of coming judgment. 
Conservatives underestimate the strength of this view by assum- 
ing it implies that Jonah's sign was only a call to repentance. 



A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 9 

Jonah cried, " Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." 
So Christ proclaimed : " Repent, or Jerusalem shall be over- 
thrown ;" and in conduct and destiny the Jews strongly contrast 
with the Ninevites (428). 

If the view of Luke's mean'ng here expressed is 
correct, it contradicts the meaning ascribed to Matthew ; 
and I am not sure which view the writer really takes. 
He certainly understands Matthew correctly ; or rather^ 
he understands correctly the words of Jesus reported by 
Matthew ; for when Jesus says, " No sign shall be given 
save the sign of Jonah/' and then immediately adds : 
" For as Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster three 
days and three nights, so shall the Son of man be three 
days and three nights in the heart of the earth/' he 
certainly explains by the last remark what he means by 
the sign of Jonah. His own resurrection, after entomb- 
ment for three days, is called the sign of Jonah, because 
of the similarity of the two miracles. This view is con- 
firmed by the consideration that it was undoubtedly a 
miraculous sign which the scribes and Pharisees de- 
manded; and the word sign in his answer must be 
understood in the same sense. It is also confirmed by 
the consideration that the word rendered sign (seemelon) 
is used almost exclusively in the New Testament for 
signs of a miraculous character. Indeed, it is the word 
most usually translated miracle. Those works which 
we call miracles are in the New Testament designated 
by three different Greek words. They are called mighty 
works (dunameis), because of the divine power exhib- 
ited in them. They are called wonders (terafa), because 
of the wonder which they excite in the beholder ; and 
they are called signs (seemeia), because they always sig- 
nify something connected with the will of God. 



10 JESUS AND JONAH. 

This view is furthermore confirmed, and made, I 
think, altogether certain, by the parallel passage in 
Luke, who quotes another remark of Jesus not reported 
by Matthew. According to his report, Jesus said : 
" For even as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so 
shall also the Son of man be to this generation" (xi. 
30). This is not to be regarded as a different version 
of the Lord's answer, but only as an additional part of 
the whole answer, Luke giving one part and Matthew 
the other, as they very often do. Jesus then asserts that 
Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, and he uses the word 
sign, as we have seen, in the sense of a miracle. But 
how could Jonah have been a miraculous sign to the 
Ninevites? He wrought no miracle among them ; and 
his preaching could not have been regarded by them as 
miraculous until, by means of some separate miraculous 
sign they were convinced that it was a miraculous pre- 
diction. That which made him a sign to the Ninevites 
must then have been his experience in the fish, con- 
nected as it was with the command twice given to go 
and cry against Nineveh. 

One of the eight writers in the symposium, while 
agreeing with the others on the main question under 
discussion, avows explicitly the view just stated of the 
sign of Jonah. He says: 

Apt, therefore, as is the story of Jonah's preaching to illus- 
trate the relation of Jesus to his generation, the wording of Luke 
xi. 30, and what we know of the habits of interpretation in Jesus* 
day, lead to the conclusion that Luke's more general explanation 
of the sign of Jonah should be understood in the sense of Mat- 
thew's more concrete interpretation ; and to the conviction that 
in the use Jesus made of the words, the sign of Jonah was the 
deliverance by which he came to be the bearer to Nineveh of the 
effective warning which led to the people's -repentance. The 



A bYMPOtilVM REVIEWED. 11 

explanation of the sign of Jonah in Matthew xii. 40, and Luke 
xi. 30, may be paraphrased thus: As, in the personal experience 
of Jonah, God proved to him, and afterward to those who heard 
of his attempted flight, that he was the chosen messenger to the 
Ninevites; so in the personal experience of the Son of man will 
God prove to all men that he is the appointed messenger to this 
generation. This sign in each case is the personal exper ence of 
the prophet (Professor Ehees, 423, 424). 

Professor Ropes also appears to take the same posi- 
tion, and he quotes with approval a sta'ement of the 
analogy drawn by Jesus, from the pen of Grass. Here 
is what he says of this point : 

Perhaps Christ's hearers would naturally think of the sea- 
monster miracle as the sign of Jonah. And here, too, a good 
analogy may be found. " In Jonah's life a miracle occurred 
which could have exerted a controlling influence in vanquishing 
opposition to him. Yet this didn't help the Ninevites, since 
they learned nothing about it, but had come to the decision on 
the basis of Jonah's preaching alone. Even so in Christ's life, 
a miracle was about to occur which could exert a controlling 
influence in drawing men to him. Yet this w T ould no more 
help this generation to come to a decision than the Jonah sign 
helped the Ninevites; they must decide on the sole basis of 
Chiist's preaching" (428). 

While these two writers differ from two others of 
the eight in agreeing that the sign of Jonah is the mir- 
acle wrought on Jonah's person, the latter, forgetting 
the very words of Jesus on which he is commenting, 
declares that the Ninevites were not helped by the sign 
" since they learned nothing about it." How could it 
be true, then, that he was a sign to the Ninevites? How 
could an event be a sign to a people when they had 
never heard of it? And, stranger still, this Professor 
says that the sign which Jesus was about to give by his 



12 JESUS AND JONAH, 

resurrection would not help his generation to come to a 
decision, when the facts in the Book of Acts show that 
it did help them by causing many thousand to come 
to a decision under the preaching of the apostles. 

But did the Ninevites hear of the sign of Jonah be- 
fore they repented at his preaching? These men and 
many others answer, no ; and they so answer because 
the fact is not stated in the Book of Jonah. But while 
it is not stated in that book, it is stated by Jesus, and 
there is nothing in the book which conflicts with the 
statement. On the contrary, the book leaves the way 
open for the supposition that the news of the miracle 
reached Nineveh as soon as Jonah did, if not sooner. 
When he was landed from the mouth of the fish the 
story immediately became known to the men who found 
him on the seashore, or to whose house he resorted 
for food. It is not probable that after fasting and suffer- 
ing as he did for three days, he was able at once to 
travel toward home. The story, then, would start ahead 
of him. When he reached home, we are not told that 
the Lord renewed immediately the command to go to 
Nineveh. For aught that is said in the text to the 
contrary, he may have remained in quiet at home for a 
week, or a month, before this command came to him; 
and certainly if God desired the sign to have its effect 
in advance on the Ninevites, he would delay the com- 
mand sufficiently for the purpose. 

That this view of the sign, and of its conveyance to 
the Ninevites, is correct, is finally proved by the nature 
of the analogy which Jesus draws. The sign which he 
gave to the men of his generation by his resurrection 
from the dead, was communicated to them in all its 
details by the apostles. Otherwise it could have been 



A SYMPOSIUM RE VIEWED. 13 

to them no sign. Necessarily, then, if there was a real 
analogy, and not a sophistical assertion of one, the sign 
in the person of Jonah must have been communicated 
to the Ninevites, and it must, as in the other case, have 
been the controlling evidence on which their faith and 
their cons<quent repentance rested. In view of all 
these considerations, I hope I shall not be considered 
too confident when I say that the sign of Jonah was the 
miracle wrought on his person, and that this was cer- 
tainly known to the Ninevites before they repented at 
his preaching. 

Only one of the eight writers whose symposium I 
am reviewing, Professor Ropes, denies that Jesus had 
knowledge of the literary history of the Old Testament 
above that of his contemporaries. The other seven, 
in arguing that his remark about Jonah does not com- 
mit him to the historical reality of the story, appeal to 
what they consider parallel remarks which convey no 
similar implication. Taking them in the order in which 
I find them, I shall carefully consider what they say on 
this point. 

Mr. Barnes puts the argument thus : 

Jesus enforce d the message upon his lettered hearers with 
classic point, as in speaking to the students of Princeton Dr. A. 
J. Gordon might have warned them against the captivating 
assaults of sin coming in Lke captors in the wooden horse. The 
Homeric question would not, thereby, be settled or even raised 
to consciousness in a healthy mind (p. 417). 

I think that a moment's reflection will show that 
this last statement would or would not be true accord- 
ing to circumstances. If the students addressed knew 
that the lectunr disbelieved the story of the wooden 
horse, they would, of course, underhand him as not 



14 JESUS AND JONAIL 

intending to affirm its truthfulness. But if they be- 
lieved the story themselves, and knew nothing of his 
belief, they would unquestionably suppose that he be- 
lieved as they did. In the latter case, if he did not 
wish to be understood as indorsing the story, fair deal- 
ing with his hearers would demand an intimation at 
least of his real opinion. In the case of Jesus, his 
hearers believed the reality of the story of Jonah, and 
they had not the least thought that Jesus doubted it . 
when then he said that Jonah was three days and three 
nights in the belly of the fish, they could not doubt that 
he believed it; and he made a false impression if he 
did not. 

Next we take Professor Thayer's statement : 

To regard our Lord's use of the narrative as vouching for it 
as history, is to confound the province and function of a preacher 
of righteousness with that of a higher critic or of a scientific 
lecturer. As reasonably might one infer from an allusion in a 
modern sermon to William Tell, or Effie Deans, or the Man 
Without a Country, that the speaker held these personages to be 
thoroughly historic, and their narrated experiences matters of 
fact. As warrantably might we make Christ's gratuitous men- 
tion (only three verges later) of evil spirits as frequenting water- 
less places, the basis of a demonology for which he is to be held 
resj onsible (418). 

As to William Tell, although I know that some 
critics now doubt whether he ever existed, when I hear 
a speaker mention something that he did, I always think 
that he believes the incident which he mentions, unless 
he gives some intimation to the contrary. If he intro- 
duces it as something that is said to have been done by 
William Tell, I understand him as doubting the story. 
As for Effie Deans, and the Man Without a Country, I 
confess myself so ignorant of them, that if I were to 



A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 15 

hear Professor Thayer in sober discourse mention some- 
thing that either of them did, I would suppose that he 
was mentioning a real transaction. I stand with refer- 
ence to William Tell where the Jews sto<d with rtfer- 
ence to Jonah ; and with reference to Effie Deans and 
the Man Without a Country, I stand as the Jews would 
have stood if they had never heard of Jonah. J<sus, 
then, if he did not believe the story of Jonah, would 
have made the same false impression on the Jews as the 
Professor would on me in the case of Effie D< ans. 

As to our Lord's remark about evil spirits frequenting 
waterless places, while it would be hazardous to make it 
the u ba^is of a demonology for which he is to be held 
responsible," he certainly is to be held responsible for 
the remark itself. If an evil spirit, when he left a 
man, did not frequent waterless places, I should be glad 
to learn from Professor Thayer what kind of places he 
did frequent. If" we may judge by those that went into 
the herd of swine, the evil spirits were not fond of 
being in the water; and even before they went out of 
the man they kept him among the tombs, which were 
certainly waterless places. If, then, the statement about 
the evil spirit is to be taken as a parallel to that about 
Jonah, we should conclude that the latter was really 
three days and three nights in the fish. Moreover, if 
Jesus knew the mysterious movements of disembodied 
spirits, we might credit him with knowing something 
about men in the flesh like Jonah. 

Professor Franklin Johnson, of Chicago University, 
makes the same argument with different illustrations: 

The great writers and orators of all peoples and ages have 
spoken of the characters of fiction as if they were real. All 
competent writers and orators do so to-day. Even the minister 



16 JESUS AND JONAH. 

who is offended with these lines will refer in next Sunday \* 
sermon to the prodigal son, to the sower, to the merchant 
seeking goodly pearls, without telling his people these charact rs 
are not historical. He will refer to Mr. Facing-both-ways, to Mr. 
F- aring, or to Christian at the Wicket Gate, in the Slough of 
Despond, or in the Vanity Fair, and will toll what they did, 
with no thought of the question whether his statements are 
derived from history or from allegory. 1 could show by many 
examples that this was the custom of the writers and speakers 
of antiquity. In fact, one of these examples is given by Christ 
himself. After relating the parable of the Unjust Judge, he 
begins his comment upon it with a sentence such as he would 
have used had the parable been history: "Hear what the unjust 
judge saith" (Luke xviii. 6). So also in Jude 7, 14, 15, the lord's 
brother refers to the story of the crime of the angels with the 
women of the world before the flood, without raising the ques- 
tion of its historical character, and quotes from the Book of 
Enoch, as we quote from some disputed dialogue of Plato, with- 
out raising the question of its genuineness (418, 419). 

The Professor need not have insisted so earnestly 
that writers and orators of all peoples and ages speak of 
the characters of fiction as if they were real; for this is 
not denied by anybody. The question at issue is evaded 
by all such remarks, and by all the illustrations adduced 
in their support. The real question is, whether, in the 
specific remark of Christ about Jonah, and in strictly 
parallel remarks, the reality of the alleged experience is 
affirmed. This depends on the remark itself, and on 
the connection in which it occurs; but not on one or a 
thousand remarks of a different nature about other 
matters. Professor Johnson doubtless thought, when 
he wrote his article, that his examples were relevant and 
conclusive. Let us examine them, and see. 

His first group includes three characters in the 
Saviour's parables ; and he assumes that the prodigal son, 
the sower, and the dealer in pearls were not historical 



A SYMPOSIUM ME VIEWED. 17 

characters. How does he know that they were not ? 
Did no sower ever go out to sow, and meet with the 
exact experience of the one in the parable? The Pro- 
fessor must know that this was the experience of thou- 
sands of sowers in Palestine every year ; and that it is 
to this day. Did no younger son ever pass through the 
identical experiences of the prodigal? Who can say no, 
when thousands of them are now passing through expe- 
riences almost identical? And as to the unjust judge, 
tyrannical governments in the East have swarmed with 
such in all ages, and no man can safely deny that one of 
them spoke and acted precisely as Jesus describes him. 
The second group of examples, taken from " Pilgrim's 
Progress," can be used as they are for the reason, first, 
that nearly all auditors are familiar with them as fictitious 
characters; and second, because their very names are 
suggestive of fiction, and would be so understood on 
hearing them the first time. There is no parallel be- 
tween them and the case in hand ; for, in order to such 
a parallel the hearers of Jesus should have known that 
Jonah was a fictitious character, or else the language of 
Jesus should have been suggestive of fiction. In the 
third group, taken from Jude, the Professor assumes as 
correct an interpretation which is disputed ; and even so 
he does not make good his point. The great majoriiy 
of scholars deny that Jude makes any allusion to crime 
committed by angels with women ; and if it can be 
made out that he does, then it will still be necessary, 
bef re the argument is made good, to show that the fact 
which he alludes to was not a fact; and this Professor 
Johnson can not do. He can make it appear very im- 
probable, but further than this he can not go. On the 
contrary, if he could prove that Jude asserts that this 



18 JESUS AND JONAH. 

crime was committed, he would thereby prove to most 
men that it really was. The case would then be like 
that of Jesus and Jonah. As to the Book of Enoch, 
Jude makes no statement on its authority. He makes 
a statement about Enoch which is also found substan- 
tially in that book ; but he states it as a fact without 
referring to his source of knowledge, and nearly all 
men, since his epistle was written, have received it as a 
fact; so that, if it is not a fact, Jude has deceived them. 
This is a true parallel to the remark of Jesus about 
Jonah ; for in both instances a fact is asserted, and men 
in general have believed the fact because of these asser- 
tions. Careful and elaborate, therefore, as is the argu- 
ment of Professor Johnson, it is a failure. 

Professor Hyde, the writer who thinks that the passage 
under consideration may mean "any one of ten thou- 
sands things to as many readers," and that " precisely 
what Jesus meant by it we shall never know," follows 
the same line of argument, and expresses himself thus : 

As to Jesus' use of the Old Testament, it seems to me that 
he used it just as we use Bunyan or Shakespeare — without 
concerning himself one way or the other about its histori- 
city or literary form or authorship, or date of composition, and 
assuming that his immediate hearers would have sufficient com- 
mon sense to take his words as he meant them. To tie him 
down to a belief in the historical character of the story of 
Jonah is as absurd as it would be to make every man who evei 
referred to the Slough of Despond a believer in the geographical 
reality of such a place (419, 420). 

If Jesus used the Old Testament as we use Bunyan 
and Shakespeare, he used it as an allegory or a poem, 
and in no sense as history. It is astonishing that a sane 
man can so assert or believe. But perhaps the Profes- 
sor intended to qualify the statement by the words, 






A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 19 

" without concerning himself one way or the other about 
its historicity or literary form or authorship, or date of 
composition." But if he used it without concerning 
him-elf about its historicity or its authorship, he did 
not use it as we use Bunyan and Shakespeare. Who 
quotes either of these authors without concerning him- 
self about their historicity ? The man who would use 
Anthony's oration over Caesar's dead body, or Chris- 
tian's struggle through the Slough of Despond, as a 
piece of history, would be set down as an ignoramus or 
deceiver; and the man who would quote Shakespeare in 
the name of Milton, or Bunyan in the name of Ben Jon- 
son, would reap the same reward. We do not then use 
these two works, or any other works, without concern- 
ing ourselves about their historicity or their authorship ; 
and the same is true of Jesus in his dealings with the 
Old Testament. The Professor's citation of the Slough 
of Despond is wide of the mark; for the only reason 
why a public speaker can now refer to that without 
misleading his hearers into the belief of its reality, is 
that his hearers already know it to be an imaginary 
slough. If the hearers of Jesus had so understood the 
story of Jonah, the cases would be parallel ; but it is 
notorious, and it is freely admitted that they understood 
the story to be true, and when, therefore, Jesus spoke of 
it as a true story he deceived them if it was not. This 
point, let me say with emphasis, is totally ignored by 
all the writers on the side with these eight. Why so ? 
Is it because they are too dull to see that such a point 
can be made in answer to them? I can not think so. 
Why, then, do they ignore it? I should be glad to 
know. I hope I shall obtain from some of them an 
answer. 



20 JESUS AND JONAH. 

The fifth writer in the symposium is Philip S. 
Moxom, of Springfield, Mass. As he denies the genu- 
ineness of the passage under consideration, he saves 
himself the necessity of trying to prove that the remark 
of Jesus about Jonah does not imply the reality of 
J mah's experience ; we therefore pass on to the sixth 
wi iter, who is Professor Rhees, of Newton Theological 
Institution. He says : 

It is evident that in Jesus' words the story of Jonah is 
treated as historical. The contemporaries of Jesus held it to be 
sober history. And Jonah is appealed to in the same way as 
Abraham and David are referred to in the New Testament. It 
is to be noticed, however, that the reference is only by way of 
illustration. And consequently it may not be said that the 
validity of the illustration passes, if the story is found to be 
allegory and not fullest history. So long as it served to suggest 
to the hearers of Jesus the thought of his vindication by a 
miraculous deliverance, the story would be an apt illustration. 
And we need not doubt that our Lord would use it without rais- 
ing the question of its historicity (425, 426). 

This writer, like all the others, evades the real issue 
and raises another. The question is not, whether an 
illustration drawn from a supposed fact would be invali- 
dated by the discovery that the account of the fact is 
allegorical; but whether the particular use that Je^us 
made of the story of Jonah implies that Jonah was in 
the fish. Wh n Prof. Rhees says, at the beginning of 
the extract just made, that in the words of Jesus the 
story of Jonah is treated as historical, and adds that the 
contemporaries of Jesus held it to be sober history, he 
cuts himself off from all escape in the direction in which 
he seeks it; for if Jesus treated the story as historical 
in speaking to men who held it to be so, then he was 
either mistaken about it himself, or he deceived his 



A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 21 

hearers. There i* no possible escape from this alter- 
native. 

To say that the reference to Jonah is " only by way 
of illustration," betrays still greater confusion of 
thought. What was he aiming to illustrate? Let us 
try a strictly parallel remark : "As in Adam all die, so 
also in Christ shall all be made alive." Is this an illus- 
tration? To ask the question is to answer it. Instead 
of being an illustration, it is the prediction of a future 
fact and the declaration that it will be as uni- 
versal as a well-known fact in the past. The un- 
doubted reality of the past fact is what gives force 
to the assertion respecting the future one. If a 
man could answer Paul by saying, Very well; all 
did not die in Adam ; he could add, Then all, according 
to jour own showing, will not be made alive in Christ. 
So in the present instance. If the Pharisees could have 
answered Je^us, as these critics now do, by saying, Very 
well, Master ; Jonah was not in the bowels of the fish ; 
they could have added, Therefore, according to your 
own showing, you will not be in the heart of the earth. 
Instead of being an illustration of something — and Pro- 
fessor Rhees does not attempt to tell us of what — the 
remark was a solemn prediction of a fact yet to be, 
which should be analogous to one that certainly had been. 

But Professor Rhees, like all the others of the sym- 
posium, presents a supposed parallel to the remark in 
question, by which he attempts to sustain his interpre- 
tation. He says : 

It is not generally held that by his words in the parable of 
the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus has given sanction to the feature 
of Jewish eschatology which pictured the blessed dead, in wait- 
ing for the resurrection, as reclining in Abraham's bosom. It is no 



22 JESUS AND JONAH. 

more necessary to hold that he has here sanctioned any particu- 
lar conclusion concerning the nature of the narrative in the 
Book of Jonah (426). 

If there was any such " feature of Jewish eschatol- 
ogy " as is here intimated, I am sure Jesus never uttered 
a word to give sanction to it. It would have been too 
foolish a " feature " for any thoughtful man to sanction ; 
for how could all the millions of the "blessed dead" 
recline in the bosom of a single man ? This " feature " 
would require Abraham to have an enormous bosom. 
It was a kindred thought, perhaps, which caused the 
men who constructed the grave of Noah, which is 
pointed out to the traveler in Palestine, to make it 
ninety feet long. No, Professor; Jesus did not sanction 
so absurd a " feature"; but he did say that angels bore 
Lazarus into Abraham's bosom ; and I do n't know any 
more comfortable place to which they could have borne 
him. There was room enough for him in the bosom of 
the patriarch, and if Professor Rhees does not believe 
that he was really borne thither, will he please to tell us 
whither he was borne? I know so little about that 
region myself, that I can take Jesus at his word when 
he speaks of it. If I reject his word about it, to whom 
shall I go? 

The next writer, Amory H. Bradford, expresses 
himself very briefly and very clearly. He says : 

If the Book of Jonah was known by the Master to be a 
parable written for the purpose of conveying a great moral les- 
son, he might have referred to it in the language here used. He 
would not have conveyed a false impression, since his hearers 
would have understood his reference (427). 

This last remark shows that Mr. Bradford has 
caught one idea which the other writers have missed. 



A SYMPOSIUM BE VIEWED. 23 

He sees that, in order to avoid making a false impres- 
sion by referring to an imaginary fact as if it were real* 
the hearers as well as the speaker must understand the 
reference. But while he is undoubtedly correct in this 
he forgets that if Jesus made such a reference as this, his 
hearers did not understand the reference, for it is admitted 
on all hands that the Jews understood the story of Jonah 
to be sober history ; and if Jesus did not so understand 
it, then, according to Mr. Bradford's own showing, he 
made a false impression. This writer has stumbled on 
the truth at one point, only to stumble over it at an- 
other. 

Like the others, this writer finds a parallel, as he 
supposes, in an admissible use of fictitious characters, 
and his chosen example is taken from the novel, " Les 
Miserables ": 

Preachers not infrequently refer to the good bishop in " Les 
Miserables " as if be were a historical person ; but because 
Canon Stubbs speaks of that story as if it were true, no one 
thinks that he means to be so understood, and if it is not true he 
can never be trusted again. He took it for granted that his 
hearers understood him and did not need to qualify his state- 
ment. It is quite conceivable that our Lord spoke in the same 
way (427). 

Very well ; Canon Stubbs took it for granted that 
his hearers understood him as not affirming the truth of 
the story of the bishop, but in the case of Jesus the 
reverse was true ; so the cases are not parallel. If 
Canon Stubbs would have misled his hearers, had they 
not understood him as they did, then Jesus misled his 
hearers if he understood the story of Jonah to be 
fictitious. Mr. Bradford must wipe out all that he has 
written in this symposium, and make a new start from 



24 JESUS AMJ JONAH. 

a different point of view, if he is to maintain his, 
contention. 

Near the close of his brief article, Mr. Bradford 
takes another turn in his effort to get rid of the natural 
view of the case. He says : 

He was not asked about the story ; he was asked for a sign, 
and his reference to Jonah was incidental, and used because it 
would be easily understood by those whom he addressed (428). 

Yes; u easily understood by those whom he ad- 
dressed "; and understood, as we have again and again 
reiterated, as a real event. Being so understood hy 
them, we ask again, How can Jesus be relieved of the 
charge of duplicity if he knew that the event was not 
real, and yet used it to confirm their impression that it 
was? Again I demand that some of the critics shall 
answer this question. 

As Professor Ropes, the last of the eight, denies tt at 
Jesus knew any more about the Book of Jonah than did 
his contemporaries, he, of course, is freed from the 
necessity of explaining how he could consistently refer 
to the incident of the fish as a reality when it was not. 
He did so, according to this Professor, because he knew 
no better than to believe the story. 

We now come to the comments made on this sympo- 
*ium by the associate editor of the Biblical World, Pro- 
fessor Shailer Mathews. He states the common belief 
of the eight writers in these words : 

Christ's use of the experience of Jonah, as an illustration, in 
no way gives his sanction to the view that the Book of Jonah is 
history. 

In this attempt to represent the common belief of 
the writers, the editor has drawn upon his imagination 



A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED. 25 

rather than upon the articles of the writers; for only 
one of them says that Jesus used the experience of 
Jonah as an illustration; and I have showed very 
plainly, I think, that he did not so use it. 

These writers all feel, at least those of them who 
credit Jesus with knowing the facts about Jonah, that 
the only way to defend their position is to find, eith< r 
in the lips of Jesus himself, or in those of some other 
approved speaker, a parallel statement in which the 
reality of the past fact referred to is not implied. They 
have ransacked the writings of Shakespeare, of Bunyan> 
of the popular novelists, and the parables of Jesus, to 
find one, and they have brought forth many; but every 
one of them fails, as we have seen, in the essential point 
of comparison. Let them find, if they can, a single 
instance in which Jesus mentioned something in the 
past which his hearers believed to be a fact, but which 
he certainly knew to be not a fact, and then compared 
with this some event yet in the future. I have givin 
one allusion that is parallel, the saying of Paul, a As in 
Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive "; but 
the allusion is to a real past event. Here is another 
example: "This Jesus, who was received up from you 
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld 
him going into heaven " (Acts i. 11). Here the past 
event, his going into heaven, was a real one. Again : 
"As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with 
fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of 
man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather 
out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and 
them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the fur- 
nace of fire " (Matt. xiii. 40,41). Here is a strictly 
parallel case, and the past event, the gathering and 



26 JESUS AND JONAH. 

burning of the tares, is strictly historical. u As Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of 
man must be lifted up" (John iii. 14). Again: "As it 
came to pass in the days of Noah, even so shall it be 
also in the days of the Son of man" (Luke xvii. 26). 
I know not how many more instances of the same con- 
struction can be found, for I have mentioned these only 
from memory; but let the critics find at least one such 
in which the past event, though spoken of as a reality, 
and believed by the hearer to be a reality, was known by 
Jesus to be a fiction. Then, and not till then, may they 
claim that the s'ory of Jonah may also be a fiction, not- 
withstanding the use Jesus makes of it. If he had said, 
As the trees went forth once to choose for themselves a 
king, so shall something else yet take place; and had 
the Jews believed that Jothan's fable was a piece of 
hi>tory, this would be such an example as the critics are 
searching for. Again, I say, let them find such an ex- 
ample, and cease their endless production of parallels 
that are not parallels. I am neither a prophet, nor the 
son of a prophet, but I stake my reputation as a man 
of some knowledge of the subject on the assertion that 
the example demanded will never be found. 



II. PROF. DRIVER ON THE BOOK OF JONAH. 

I propose next to review the new critical theory as 
to the origin and character of the Book of Jonah. I 
select, as representing most fairly that theory, what Pro- 
fessor Driver says in his " Introduction to the Literature 
of the Old Testament." 

No author whom I have read has a better conception 
of the design of the book ; for as an exegete, Professor 
Driver has few superiors; but on the question of his- 
toricity he stands with the scholars whose symposium I 
have reviewed, and he assigns to the book a date so late 
as to render its historicity a matter of impossibility, 
unless its author was miraculously inspired to know the 
history, which he tacitly denies. 

I will state his position in his own words, and then 
consider seriatim the reasons by which he supports it. 
He says: 

On the historical character of the narrative opinions have 
differed widely. Quite irrespectively of the miraculous features, 
in the narrative, it must be admitted that there are indications 
that it is not strictly historical. 

The first of these " indications " which he mentions 
is set forth as follows : 

The sudden conversion, on such a large scale as (without 
pressing single expressions) is evidently implied, of a great 
heathen population, is contrary to analogy; nor is it easy to im- 
agine a monarch of the type depicted in the Assyrian inscriptions 
behaving as the king of Nineveh is represented as acting in the 
presence of the Hebrew prophet (p. 303). 

27 



28 JESUS AND JONAH. 

According to this mode of reasoning, an account of 
any sudden change in a great population, which is 
u contrary to analogy," is to be regarded as self-evidently 
unhistorical ; and if one in a succession of kings is rep- 
resented as acting a much humbler part than the others, 
it is difficult to imagine that the representation is true. 
I wonder, then, what Professor Driver thinks of the 
statement, contrary to all analogy, that three thousand 
persons were converted to Christ by a single discourse 
of Peter on the great Pentecost? And what does he 
think of the account of Sergius Paulus, who is said, 
contrary to the analogy of Roman Proconsuls, to have 
suddenly believed in Jesus after a brief interview with 
Paul and Barnabas? What does he think of the great 
waves of religious revolution, quite similar to that on 
Pentecost, which have often characterized modern revi- 
vals in both Christian and heathen lands? Such reason- 
ing would destroy all faith in the most striking events 
of history. But the critics of this new school, like the 
avowed enemies of the Bible, never reason thus except 
when they are seeking to set aside the historicity of 
some Bible narrative. Their antipathy to the belief of 
events that are contrary to analogy seem limited to 
Biblical events. 

The author's second reason is given in these words: 

It is remarkable, also, that the conversion of Nineveh, if it 
took place upon the scale described should have produced so 
little permanent effect; for the Assyrians are uniformly repre- 
sented in the Old Testament as idolaters. 

Is it not equally remarkable that the frequent con- 
versions of Israel under the Judges should have had so 
little permanent effect? That the conversion of Judah 



PROF. DRIVER ON JONAH. 29 

under Ilezekiah should have had so little permanent 
effect as to be followed immediately by the abominable 
idolatries of Manasseh's reign? Paul marveled that the 
Galatians had so soon turned away from him who called 
them, to another gospel — a backward revolution in less 
than three years; yet, all these things, remarkable as 
as they were, actually took place. Is an account of 
something " remarkable" to be understood as indicating 
that the book containing it is not historical? If so, we 
must scout all history except that of the most common- 
place character. The school to which Professor Driver 
belongs deals thus, I say again, only with the narratives 
of the Bible. And this mode of treatment is in the 
present instance the more remarkable from the consider- 
ation that, although it is true that the Ninevites are 
represented in the Old Testament, when their religion is 
mentioned at all, as idolaters, they are not mentioned 
after the visit of Jonah till the reign of Pul, King of 
Assyria, who made a friendly alliance with Menahem, of 
Israel. Now Menahem came to the throne two years 
after the death of Jeroboam, and he had been reigning 
some years when Pul marched across the Euphrates; 
and if the visit of Jonah to Nineveh occurred some 
years before the death of Jeroboam, then we have a 
lapse of from five or six to a dozen or more years before 
Nineveh is mentioned again; and even then it is only 
her king who is mentioned, without a word as to the 
religious condition of her people. Now if Jonah did 
not believe that the repentance of the Ninevites w r ould 
last through forty days, should it be considered very 
"remarkable" that we have no trace of it after a few 
years ? 



30 JESUS AND JONAH. 

The third reason given by Professor Driver is more 
remarkable still. It is this: 

But in fact the structure of the narrative shows that the 
didactic purpose of the book is the author's chief aim. He intro- 
duces just those details that have a bearing upon this, while 
omitting others which, had his interest been in the history as 
such, might naturally have been mentioned; e. #., details as to 
the spot at which Jonah was cast on the island, and particulars 
as to the special sins of which the Ninevites were guilty. 

I wonder what man of sense ever attempted to write 
history with an " interest in the history as such," and 
without a didaetie aim as his chief purpose in writing. 
Surely, no such historical writing can be found in the 
Bible. Even the four Gospels, though devoted to the 
most deeply interesting historical events that ever trans- 
pired on this old earth, had a didactic purpose as their 
chief aim — the purpose, as John expresses it, of causing 
the readers to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
the living God, and that believing they might obtain 
life through his name. History is said to be philosophy 
teaching by example; and if a narrative teaches noth- 
ing, if it has not a didactic purpose as its chief aim, then 
it is not history according to the accepted definition. 
And what wonderful omissions the author of the Book 
of Jonah was led to make by his didactic purpose! He 
failed to tell the exact spot where Jonah was thrown 
up; and what a loss to the modern tourist! I wonder 
if Jonah himself knew where he was thrown up. I 
wonder if he ever went back and tried to identify it. 
Surely, for the benefit of modern critics, he ought to 
have driven a stake there, or built a heap of stones; for 
why should the world be deprived of information so 
nee ssary to its spiritual welfare? And then, he omitted 
to mention the special sins of which the Niuevites were 



PROF. DRIVER ON JONAH. 31 

guilty ! True, everybody knew them, and every intelli- 
gent person knows now the sins to which idolatrous 
cities have been most addicted ; but surely, if the author 
of Jonah had been a modern critic of the school of 
Driver, he would not have been so absorbed in his 
didactic purpose as to omit this needed information! 

After giving all these reasons for believing that the 
narrative in question is not " strictly historical," the 
author, on the same page, and in the very next para- 
graph, makes the following statement : 

No doubt the materials of the narrative were supplied to the 
author by .tradition, and rest ultimately upon a basis of fact ; no 
doubt the outlines of the narrative are historical, and Jonah's 
preaching was actually successful at Nineveh (Luke xi. 30-32), 
though not upon the scale represented in the book. 

"No doubt" on the points here mentioned? "No 
doubt" that the narrative rests upon a basis of 
fact ? " No doubt " that the outlines of the narrative 
are historical? "No doubt" that Jonah's preaching 
was actually successful at Nineveh? Why no doubt on 
these points, when everything else in the book is 
doubted or denied ? If the author invented the fish 
story, and the gourd story, and the universal repent- 
ance of the Ninevites, why is there no doubt that he 
told the truth about the other details? There is noth- 
ing in the book itself to indicate such a difference, and 
there is nothing in contemporary history. Where, then, 
does Professor Driver obtaiu the conviction, free from 
all doubt, that so much of the story is true? The only 
clue that he gives us in his very quiet citation of Luke 
xi. 30-32. And what is found there? Why, those 
very statements of Jesus which the eight scholars in 
our symposium will not allow to have any bearing on 



32 JESUS AND JONAH. 

the historical character of the Book of Jonah. We 
there find the words, " For even as Jonah was a sign to 
tht Ninevites, so shall also the San of man be to this 
generation." " The men of Nineveh shall stand up in 
the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn 
it : for they rep nted at the preaching of Jonah ; and 
behold, a greater than Jonah is here." Professor 
Driver, then, stands against our chosen eight on this 
point; for he affirms what they deny, that the statement 
of Jesus proves the historicity of the Book of Jonah in 
the particulars mentioned, that is, his being a sign to 
the Ninevites, and the repentance of the latter under his 
preaching. With him there is "no doubt " on thrse 
points. But right here there springs up a very serious 
question, to which Professor Driver ought to give a very 
serious answer. If the words of Jesus, to which he 
refers, prove that the narrative of Jonah rests " ulti- 
mately upon a basis of fact"; that the outlines of the 
narrative are historical, and that the Ninevites did 
actually repent, why does not his exploit declaration 
that "Jonah was three days and three nights in the 
bowels of the sea monster" prove that this also is his- 
torical? I am afraid, after all, that the ultimate reason 
for denying the credibility of the narrative is that which 
is the avowed reason of unbelievers — an unwillingness 
t ) accept the miraculous in the story — and this is the 
very essence of skepticism. That the kind of criticism 
in which Professor Driver and all belonging to the 
same school indu'ge, is incipient unbelief, becomes more 
and more apparent the more closely it is scrutinized, and 
the further its development progresses. 

Further on I propose to review Professor Driver's 
evidence for the late date of the Book of Jonah ; but 



PROF. DRIVER ON JONAH. 33 

under that heading he has an argument which more 
properly belongs to the subject now before me, and I 
will notice it here. It is expressed thus : 

The non-mention of the name of the king of Nineveh, who 
plays such a prominent part in chapter three, may be taken as 
an indication that it was not known to the author of the book 
(p. 301). 

If the name of the king was not known to the 
author of the book, then, of course, the author was not 
Jonah ; neither was he one who had obtained full infor- 
mation from Jonah ; but is the book, therefore, unhis- 
torical? I can imagine an author who had learned 
correctly every detail except the king's name. It seems 
to me that the " non-mention " of the king's name has 
no bearing on the question either way ; for if Jonah 
wrote it, his didactic purpose depended upon the repent- 
ance of the king, and not upon his name; and if a 
romancer of the fifth century b. a wrote it, he could 
just as easily have invented the name of the king as to 
have invented, as he is supposed to have done, the story 
of the fish and that of the gourd vine. The Book of 
Judith is a romance of about the character ascribed by 
our critics to the Book of Jonah ; and the author of it 
does not hesitate to give the name of the imaginary 
Holofernes, whose imaginary head the imaginary Judith 
cut off; then why should the author of the Book of 
Jonah, while manufacturing much of the story, have 
hesitated to put in the name of the king, whether he 
knew it or not? 

It is the custom of destructive critics to assign dates 
to the historical books of the Bible so far this side of 
the events as to render it impossible for their authors to 
have had accurate information. This they have done, 



t 34 JESUS AND JONAH. 

jnot only with Old Testament books, but with the Gos- 
pels and Acts ; and this they have done with the Book 
of Jonah. Following their lead, Professor Driver and 
the less destructive school to which he belongs, have 
selected the fifth century b. c. as the date of this book ; 
and as Jonah lived near the close of the ninth century, this 
leaves an interval of nearly four hundred years between 
the composition of the book and the events of his life. 
This would make no difference in case of the real inspira- 
tion of the author ; but these critics grant to B ble writers 
no inspiration which could bring to their knowledge 
forgotten facts of the past, or that could guard them 
against errors in recording facts. So then it becomes us 
to examine the grounds on which so late a date is assigned 
to this book. 

The first evidence given by Driver is based upon the 
alleged use by the author of Aramaic words and forms, 
which did not come into use until the Babylonian cap- 
tivity. After saying that the book can not have been 
written till long after the lifetime of Jonah himself, he 
adds: "This appears, (1) from the style, which has 
several Aramaisms, or other marks of a late age ;" and 
he proceeds to specify a half dozen such words. I will 
not copy these and comment on them, sec ing that the 
author himself almost immediately admits that there is 
nothing conclusive in the evidence. 

He says in the next paragraph : 

Some of the linguistic features might (possibly) be consistent 
with a preexilic origin in Northern Israel (though they are more 
pronounced than those referred to page 177n) ; but taken as a 
whole, they are more naturally explained by the supposition 
that the book is a work of the post-exilic period, to which other 
considerations point with some cogency. 



PROF. DRIVER ON JONAH. 35 

This is what a musician would style playing diminu- 
endo. The confident assertion that the writing "has 
several Aramaisms," is followed by the admission that 
these may possibly be consistent with the early origin ot 
the book, and this reduces the conclusion to a mere pos- 
sibility. 

I now quote the second evidence : 

(2) From the Psalm in chapter two, which consists largely of' 
reminiscences from Psalms (in the manner of Psalms cxlii., cxliii.,, 
cxliv., 1-11), many of them not of early origin (compare verse, 
2, Psalms xviii., lxv., cxx., i.; verse 3, Psalms xviii , iv., xlii., 
vii.; verse 4, Psalms xxxi., xxii., Lam. iii., liv.; verse 5, Psalms 
xviii., iv., cxvi., iii., lxix., i.; verse 6, Psalms xxx., iii.; verse 7, 
Psalms cxlii., iii., xviii., vi.; verse 8, Psalms xxxi., vi.; verse 9, 
Psalms L, xiv., cxvi., xvii., iii., viii.) : a Psalm of Jonahs own 
age would certainly have been more original, as it would also 
have shown a more antique coloring. 

Lest the reader should fail to look up these refer- 
ences, and to make the comparisons necessary in order 
to see the force of the evidence, I shall copy the pas- 
sages referred to in full. I shall do this for another 
reason — because it is quite the custom of thepe crit ; cs 
to present an array of references which scarcely any-> 
body will have the patience to study out, but which will 
be taken by many as conclusive proof that the learned 
and laborious author has by hard labor learned the abso-: 
lute truth of what he is writing. A severe test of some 
of these groups < f figures now and then is a healthy 
exercise for the reader, and it often proves a bombshell 
under the writer. Below I give the verses in Jonah's 
p«alm cited above, and those in other psalms of which 
it is claimed that they are reminiscences. 



36 JESUS AND JONAH. 



Verse 2. 



" I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, 
And he answered me ; 
Oat of the belly of Sheol cried I, 
And thou heardest my voice." 

Alleged Parallels. 
"The chords of Sheol were round about me: 

The snares of death came upon me. 

In my d 'stress I called upon the Lord, 

And cried unto my God : 

He heard my voice out of his temple, 

And my cry before him came into his ears " (Ps. xviii. 5, 6)J 
" In my distress I cried unto the Lord, 

And he answered me" (Ps. cxx. 1). 

Now, the only thoughts common to these passages 
are those of calling upon, or crying to God in distress/ 
and being heard by him ; and these are so common- 
place in the experiences of praying people, that to find 
them expressed in similar terms by different authors, is 
no evidence at all that one copies from another. 

Verse 3. 

*' For thou didst cast me into the deep, in the heart of the seas,] 

A nd the flood was round about me ; 

All thy waves and thy billows passed over me." 

Alleged Parallels. 
" And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid" (Psa. xviii. 4). 
%< Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts : 
All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me " (Psa. xlii. 7). 

The only identical thought common to any two of 
these three passages, is that respecting God's waves and 
billows ; and there is no ground for assuming that in 
either there is a reminiscence from the other. In the 
latter instance the writer is speaking figuratively of his 
troubles, which he compares to waves and billows going 



PROF. DMIVE& ON JONAB. 37 

over him, a very common comparison for one living by 
the sea ; and Jonah, when in the fish's bowels, had no 
reason to remember the psalm in order to say that the 
waves and billows were rolling over him. 

Verse 4. 
"And I said, I am cast out from before thine eyes ; 
Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple." 

Alleged Parallels. 

"As for me, I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine 

eyes. 
Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication when 

I cried unto thee " (Psa. xxxi. 22). 
" Waters flowed over my head : I said I am cut off" (Lam. iii. 54). 

The idea of being " cut off," when in great trouble, 

is the only one common to these passages; but surely 

it is too commonplace to justify the assumption of a 

reminiscence. It occurs dozens of times in the Old 

Testament, as any one can see by a mere glance at a 

Concordance. 

Verse 5. 

" The waters compassed me about, even to the soul ; 
The deep was round about me : 
The weeds were wrapped about my head." 

Alleged Parallels. 
" The cords of death compassed me, 

And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid " (Psa. xviii. 4). 
" The cords of death compassed me, 

And the pains of Sheol got hold upon me : 

I found trouble and sorrow " (P<sa. cxvi. 3). 
"Save me, OGod: 

For the waters are come in unto my soul " (Psa. xx. 1). 

While we have here a striking reminiscence in one of 
the psalms from the other, the only appearance of rem- 
iniscence between either and Jonah is found in the 



38 JESUS AND JONAH. 

clauses, " The waters are come in un'o my soul" and, 
"the waters compassed me about even to the soul" This 
is very probably a reminiscence; for the thought of 
waters, either real, or figuratively so-called, so pressing 
around one as to reach his soul, is quite original, and is 
not likely to have originated with two writers independ- 
ently. But if David wrote the Sixty-ninth Psalm, as 
its inscription asserts, or if it was written by any one who 
lived between David and Jonah, then a reminiscence 
from it in the Book of Jonah does not prove a date for 
the latter this side the prophet's own lifetime. To serve 
the purpose of our critic, it must be proved that the 
psalm was written too late for the author of the Bock 
of Jonah to have seen it, and, at the same time, to have 
had authentic knowledge of Jonah's career. This can 

not be done. 

Verse 6. 

" I went down to the bottoms of the mountains ; 
The earth with her bars closed upon me forever: 
Yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit, 
Lord my God." 

Alleged Parallel. 

" Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol : 
Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit '' 
(Ps. xxx. 3). 

Here everything turns upon the use of the word pit. 
To go down to the pit is a common expression in many 
Old Testament writers (see Concordance) for death ; and 
to fall into a pit, for any sudden calamity. When, 
therefore, it is said by Jonah, "Thou hast brought up 
my life from the pit," he was using a commonplace 
figure of speech, but reversing the direction of the 
thought, as his deliverance from death required. Instead 



PROF. DRIVER ON JONAH. 39 

of a reminiscence from the Thirtieth Psalm, there 
is here only the use of an expression very common 
among his countrymen. 

Vefjse 7. 

" When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord : 

And my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple. ,, 

Alleged Parallels. 
" When my soul fainted within me, thou knewest my path. 
In the way wherein I walked have they hidden a snare for 
me " (Ps. cxlii. 3). 
"In my distress I called upon the name of the Lord, 
And cried unto my God ; 
He heard my voice out of his temple, 
And my cry came before him into his ears'' (Ps. xviii. 6). 

Here we have the identical expression, u My soul 
fainted within me," and the identical thought that the 
prayer of the man in distress came in unto the Lord; 
but both the expression and the thought are common- 
place, and give no evidence that the author of either 
poem had seen the other. 

Verse 8. 
" They that regard lying vanities, 
Forsake their own mercy." 

Alleged Parallel. 
" I hate them that regard lying vanities ; 
But I trust in the Lord " (Ps. xxxi. 6). 

The term vanities occurs a number of times in the 
Old Testament, being found in Deuteronomy (xxxii. 21), 
I. Kings (xvi. 13, 26), and in other books; but the 
expression " lying vanities" is found only in these two 
places, and it is probably a reminiscence in one or the. 
other. If the psalm, as its superscription asserts, was 
written by David, the author of Jonah may have bor- 
rowed the expression from it; but if the psalm was 



40 JES US A ND JON A ff. 

written after the captivity, then the author of it may 
have borrowed from Jonah. 

Verse 9. 
" But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving, 
I will pay that which I have vowed. 
Salvation is of the Lord." 

Alleged Parallels. 
" Offer unto God the sacrifices of thanksgiving ; 

And pay the vows unto the Most High " (Ps. 1. 14). 
"I will offer unto thee sacrifices of thanksgiving, 

And will call upon the name of the Lord " (Ps. cxvi. 17). 
" Salvation belongeth unto the Lord ; 
Thy b essing be upon thy people " (Ps. iii. 8). 

In the identical expression, " sacrifice of thanksgiv- 
ing,'' found in the two psalms, there is undoubtedly a 
reminiscence; but the expressi n is found in the Book 
of Leviticus, where it occurs repeatedly (see vii. 12, 13; 
xxii. 29), and this book was written, according to the 
received chronology, more than five hundred years be- 
fore the time of Jonah. But as this does not suit our 
critics, who deny the Mosaic authorship of Leviticus, 
we must tell them that it also occurs in the Book of 
Amos, who, as they all admit, was a contemporary of 
Jonah. Amos says to Israel: "Offer a sacrifice of 
thanksgiving of that which is leavened ; and proclaim 
free-will offerings, and publish them" (iv. 5). If, then, 
it is a reminiscence in Jonah, it could have been taken 
from Amos, and it is idle to claim that it was taken from 
psalms written four hundred years later. But after all, 
the author of Jonah does not use the exact expression, 
or express the exact idea found in Amos, in the law, and 
in the Psalms ; for his words are not, " I will offer the 
sacrifices of thanksgiving"; but, " I will sacrifice unto 
thee with the voice of thanksgiving." 



PEOF. DRIVER ON JONAH. 41 

As to the thought expressed at the close of verse 9, 
" Salvation is of the Lord"; and in the Third Psalm, 
" Salvation belongeth unto the Lord "; it is expressed so 
often in nearly the same words, and is a thought so 
commonplace in itself, that it furnishes no evidence of a 
reminiscence. 

We have now gone over this whole formidable list of 
" reminiscences," and we have found only two or three 
of them which can with any plausibility be so called. 
It is easy to see that the critic who compiled it took up 
every verse, and every clause of every verse in the poem 
of Jonah, and with Concordance in hand ransacked all 
the Psalms which he supposed of late date, together 
with other late writings, in search of words, phrases, 
and thoughts, which he could say were borrowed from 
these by the author of Jonah. This is a very cheap 
show of learning; for a boy twelve years old could do 
the work. The result is the empty basket which we 
have just turned bottom upward. 

If the attempt had been a success, we should have 
found every single sentence in this beautiful poem of 
Jonah a borrowed scrap from the pen of some real 
poet, and the whole would have been a " patch quilt," 
without a piece of original goods to be seen. I venture 
the assertion that so excellent a poem as this was never 
composed in this way since the world began ; and it 
never will be. On the contrary, it would be most 
natural for poets writing at a later day, and being per- 
fectly familiar with this poem to borrow, some one, and 
some another, of its fine passages, and use them in their 
own compositions. But natural as this is, it was not 
done except in two or three instances at most, and these 
we have pointed out above. 



III. IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 

If I were to hear the naked statement, without 
preface or supplement, that a man was once thrown 
overboard from a ship, was swallowed by a fish as he 
fell into the sea, was kept in the fish's bowels three days 
and three nights alive, and then thrown up alive on dry 
land, I would regard it as a " fish story," and pay no 
attention to it. So, if I were to hear the naked story 
that a man once went into the greatest and wickedest 
city on the earth, and by preaching against it one day 
caused the people, from the king on his throne to the beg- 
gar on the street, to sit down in sack-cloth and ashes and 
call mightily on God till he heard and forgave them, I 
would think of the life-long preaching done by Spur- 
geon in London, and that of other great preachers in 
other great cities, and I would not believe the story. 
Again, if I were to hear, without historical connections, 
that a man was sitting once on a sandhill in a very hot 
country, suffering almost death with the heat, and that 
in a single night a gourdvine grew up, and the next day 
made a delightful shade over his head, I would think of 
«Lck and the bean stalk, and would treat it as an idle 
tale. In like manner, were I to hear that a man once 
stood at the mouth of a cave, and called to a dead man 
within, who had been dead four days, and that the dead 
man immediately stood outside the cave alive, still 
bound hand and foot with the grave cloths, I would not 
believe that till I learned who did it, and why it was done. 

42 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE t 43 

Now unfortunately this is the way in which the three 
principal incidents in the story of Jonah come to the 
ears of many p r«ons, and it accounts for the widespread 
incredulity respecting them. To believe them is to 
believe three miracles; and we can not believe that a 
mere idle wonder is a work of God's hand. A year or 
two ago I went to see the performance of Herrmann, 
the great magician ; and I witnessed feats that were as 
mysterious to me as any miracles of which we read in 
the Bible; but if Herrmann had claimed, which he did 
not, that they were wrought by the direct power of 
God, I would have denied it flatly; for I could not 
believe that God would take part in a show which did 
no good except to gratify idle curiosity, and to fill Herr- 
mann's pocket with silver. If I am called on to be- 
lieve a wonder which could be wrought only by the 
direct power of God, T must see in it something that 
makes it worthy of God. When the occasion is such, 
or the manifest purpose is such, as to demand, or even 
to justify, the interposition of God's hand, this at once 
removes the incredibility which would otherwise attach 
to the story. I propose now to look at the story of 
Jonah from this point of view, and to see if it will 
remain incredible after it is understood. 

Behold, then, the city of Nineveh, "that great city," 
the greatest that had thus far been built on earth, the 
head of the Assyrian Empire, which was the great- 
est and most powerful empire yet established among 
men. The city is wholly given to idolatry, and to all 
those abominations which ever characterize idolatrous 
peoples. It leads in these abominations all the nations 
of Western Asia, over all of which its king has rule. 
God looks down upon the vast population of both city 



44 JESUS AND JONAH. 

and empire, and he sees in every individual of the teem- 
ing millions one of the immortal creatures of his hand 
reveling in iniquity and rushing on to eternal ruin. 
He is the same God who so loved the world that he 
gave his own Son, that whosoever believeth in him might 
not perish, but have eternal life. Did he who cared so 
much for men afterward, care nothing for them then ? 
Or, do not the words just quoted express the divine 
compassion which moved him in all the ages before 
the advent of Christ? He longs for these prodigals, 
and he is about to institute measures to bring them to 
repontance. 

The Scriptures reveal to us no way in which God 
brings men to repentance, except in connection with 
preaching. But if Nineveh is to be brought to repent- 
ance, the task must be assigned to no ordinary preacher. 
God assigned it to the prophet Jonah, the son of Amit- 
tai, of Gath-hepher. Very little is said of this prophet 
outside the book which bears his name, but that little 
implies a great deal. He lived under the reign of Jero- 
boam the Second. This prince came to the throne of 
Israel under most discouraging circumstances. During 
the reign of his grandfather, Jehoahaz, Hazsel, king of 
Syria, had subdued and overrun Israel. In the expres- 
sive language of the Book of Kings, he " destroyed 
them, and made them like the dust in threshing/' He 
left Jehoahaz only fifty horsemen, ten chariots and ten 
thousand footmen (II. Kings xiii. 3-7). His son 
Joash, by three successful battles fought under encour- 
agement given by the prophet Elisha, succeeded in 
throwing off the yoke of Syria, but the country was left 
in extreme weakness and distress, so that with reference 
to the beginning of Jeroboam's reign it is said 2 " The 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 45 

Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter ; 
for there was none shut up or left at large, neither was 
there any helper for Israel " (xiv. 26). Though coming 
to the throne under such circumstances, Jeroboam, in the 
course of a reign of forty-one years, not only re- 
established the prosperity of his nation, but he con- 
quered Syria, and extended the northern boundary of 
his kingdom to the utmost limit that it had attained 
under David and Solomon. In the language of the 
text, " He restored the border of Israel from the enter- 
ing of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah [the Dead 
Sea] ;" and he did this, the text adds, " according to the 
word of Jehovah, the God of Israel, which he spake by 
the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the 
prophet, which was of Gath-hepher " (xiv. 25). The 
account of this long reign and of these mighty con- 
quests is remarkably brief, being limited to four verses; 
but the author refers the reader for the " rest of the acts 
of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he 
warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath/' 
to the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. 
Doubtless if we had that book we should find the story 
a long one. 

Now if, in the absence of the fuller record, we 
inquire how -it was that all these conquests were made 
" according to the word of Jehovah, the God of Israel, 
which he spake by the mouth of his servant Jonah," I 
think we shall find the answer in what the author tells 
us a few chapters back of a similar work done by the 
prophet Elisha. This famous prophet lived under the 
reign of Jehoram of Israel, who was continually at war 
with Ben-Hadad, king of Syria. During those wars the 
king of Syria frequently took counsel with his chief 



46 JESUS AND JONAH. 

officers, and said : " In such and such a place shall be 
my camp." But Elisha would say to Jehoram : " Be- 
ware that thou pass not such a place, for thither the 
Syrians are coming down." By accepting this warning 
the king of Israel " saved himself, not once or twice," 
which means many times. It was impossible that the 
king of Syria should fail to see every time that his 
plans had been anticipated ; so " his heart was sorely 
troubled about this thing." As his plans had been 
made known only to his confidential advisers, he came 
to the conclusion that one of them was betraying him. 
He called them together and demanded : " Will ye not 
show me which of us is for the king of Israel?" One 
of them promptly answered: "Nay, my lord, O king; 
but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the 
king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bod- 
chamber" (II. Kings vi. 8-12). Ben-Hadad inquired 
where Elisha was sojourning, and sent a troop of cavalry 
to surround the town of Dothan and take him pris- 
oner, with the result that Elisha took captive the whole 
troop, but gave them a good dinner and sent them home 
unharmed. Having given us this account, when the 
author says that the victories of Jeroboam were achieved 
according to the word of Jehovah by Jonah, he leaves 
us to suppose that the process was the same, or similar. 
We must understand, then, that during the forty-one 
years of Jeroboam's reign, Jonah was his prophetic 
adviser respecting his military movements, and that his 
fame as such was spread abroad among surrounding 
nations. Especially would it have spread into the 
region about Nineveh, which was separated from the 
field of Jeroboam's conquests only by the river 
Euphrates. It is very clear from all this, that Jonah 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE ? 47 

was the most famous, and the greatest prophet then 
living. It was in accord, therefore, with the wisdom 
which governs all of God's dealings with men, that he, 
rather than any other man, was selected to preach to 
the Nine vites. 

There are timrs in the experience of every com- 
munity, when rebukes from a preacher of righteousness 
fall unheeded on the ears of the people; and there are 
others, when the same rebukes are rewarded with the 
richest results. In our common experience we cau 
learn in which of these conditions a community is only 
by trial; and we are often very bitterly disappointed. 
But God, who knows the secrets of all hearts, can never 
be mistaken in choosing the hour at which to strike, 
and he chose a favorable time at which to send Jonah 
to Nineveh. The history of the city at that particular 
time is to us wrapped in profound obscurity; and it 
is a fair inference that the empire was in a depressed 
condition, furnishing no startling events to catch the 
attention of historian or sculptor. Such a state of 
affairs would be favorable to a call for repentance. At 
the precise time in which the people were best prepared 
for such a message, God spoke to Jonah at his home in 
Gath-hepher, and said : "Arise, go to Nineveh, that 
great city, and cry against it ; for their wickedness is 
come up before me" (Jonah i. 1). Instead of obeying, 
Jonah arose and started in the opposite direction. 
God's command would have sent him toward the north, 
but he turns toward the south, and he stops not until 
he reaches Joppa, the principal seaport of the kingdom 
of Judah. Here he finds a ship sailing to Tarshish, the 
farthest port of the west to which vessels then sailed. 
He was running " away from the presence of Jehovah," 



48 JESUS AND JONAH. 

which means from the region in which he thought it 
probable that Jehovah would speak to him again. He 
supposed that if he could get as far away as Tarshish, 
God would not call him back from so great a distance 
to send him on the disagreeable mission. 

We might conjecture a number of motives for which 
Jonah undertook this desperate flight, and perhaps all 
of them might have had some part in causing it ; for 
men do not often embark upon desperate enterprises 
without a number of motives; but there is one which 
he himself mentioned afterward, and we must accept 
this as at least the chief of all. When, afterward, he saw 
that God did not destroy the city according to his pre- 
diction, " it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was 
angry"; and in a prayer, which was rather a remon- 
strance against Jehovah's mercy, he said: "O Jehovah, 
was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? 
Therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshish ; for I knew 
that thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion,' 
slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest 
thee of the evil" (iv. 1, 2). This shows that he fled to 
Tarshish because he did not believe that God would 
destroy the city. He believed that even after its doom 
was pronounced, God's grace, compassion, and mercy ' 
would lead him to spare the great population, and that 
his own mission would therefore appear to be a failure. 1 
This reasoning shows plainly that if he had been sure 
that the destruction of the city would follow, he would 
have gone ; and why ? Undoubtedly because Jonah, in 
common with his countrymen, hated the Ninevites, and 
would have been glad to witness their destruction. That 
proud city had sent forth its desolating armies into 
neighboring kingdoms, through mere lust of conquest, 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE f 49 

and had aroused the intensest hatred of every conquered 
nation, and no less that of every nation which sympa- 
thized with the oppressed. While God, then, was moved 
by the grace, compassion, and mercy of which Jonah 
speaks so admirably, and desired through the ministra- 
tion of Jonah to bring the Ninevites to repentance, that 
he might save them, the preacher whom he chose was 
full of hatred toward them, and refused to go because 
he desired their destruction. Jonah but reflected the 
sentiments of all Israel ; and this brings prominently to 
view another problem for Jehovah to work out, the 
riddance of his own people of a feeling so unworthy, 
not to say degrading. We shall see in the sequel that 
the aim at this riddance played an important part in 
directing the course of events. 

Jonah's flight to Joppa, whence he expected to set 
sail for Tarshish, covered a distance of not less than one 
hundred miles. He doubtless traveled rapidly, and his 
mental agitation must have been extreme ; for he had 
reason to fear at every step some providential interfer- 
ence with his attempt to escape God's command. But 
when he found passage in a ship, and was far out at sea 
with every prospect of a favorable voyage, his excite- 
ment naturally subsided, and nervous depression fol- 
lowed. He sought his berth, and fell asleep. So 
profound was his sleep, that when the storm arose even 
the tossing of the vessel did not awake him. The 
master of the vessel was astonished to find him asleep 
under such circumstances, and calling him a " sleeper," 
he cried : " What meanest thou, O sleeper ? Arise, call 
upon thy God, if so be that he will think upon us, that 
we perish not." The cry was like a thunderclap to 
Jonah. He rushed on deck to find that while he slept 



50 JESUS AND JONAH, 

such a tempest had fallen on the ship as threatened its 
destruction; that the sailors had cast the freight into the 
sea to lighten the vessel ; that every one had then called 
mightily upon his god for safety; and that they had just 
agreed to cast lots that they might know on whose 
account this evil had come upon them. The true cause 
flashed across Jonah's mind in an instant ; but he had 
nerve enough to join in the casting of lots. When he 
drew the black ball from the urn, he was immediately 
plied with questions faster than he could answer them : 
" What is thine occupation ? Whence comest thou ? 
What is thy country? Of what people art thou?" 
When they gave him a chance to speak, he confessed 
the whole truth : "lama Hebrew, and I fear Jehovah, 
the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. 
I flee from the presence of Jehovah." His questioners 
had perhaps never before heard of this God — a God who 
made the sea and the dry land — and when they heard 
that it was He who had been offended, they were u ex- 
ceedingly afraid." If the God who made the sea had 
raised the tempest against them, what could they do? 
Believing what Jonah confessed, and naturally thinking 
that his knowledge of this God would enable him to 
judge what would appease his wrath, they demand of 
him : " What shall be done unto thee, that the sea may 
be calm for us?" This demand put Jonah to the test 
of all the manliness that was in him. Had he been a 
coward, or a sneak, he would have begged the sailors to 
let him remain on board till the ship went to pieces. 
But he was too manly to permit others to perish on his 
account, and too honest, now that God had overtaken 
him, to try to escape the fate which he deserved. To 
the surprise of all, he answered ; " Take me up and cast 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 51 

me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you : 
for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon 
you." Generosity begets generosity. As he was un- 
willing for them to suffer on his account, they generously 
resolved not to save themselves at the expense of his 
life. They turn again to their abandoned oars, and 
" rowed hard to get back to land." Their efforts are in 
vain. The sea grows more and more tempestuous 
against them, and they see clearly that the God who 
made the sea is determined to have his own way, as 
declared by Jonah. Trained to stand by a comrade to 
the last, and to perish if need be in the effort to save 
him, they tremble at the thought of casting even a 
strange passenger into the sea to save themselves; and 
fearing lest, even with the clear demonstration before 
them, they might offend the God whom they were seek- 
ing to appease, before they laid hands on Jonah they 
offered this prayer: "We beseech thee, O Jehovah, we 
beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and 
lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Jehovah, 
hast done as it pleased thee." Thus, for the first time 
in their lives they prayed to Jehovah, the only true and 
living God. Then, with the steady step which only 
trained sailors could command on a vessel tossed as that 
one was, they took Jonah, several men seizing him from 
either side, walked to the rail and cast him into the 
boiling sea. The vessel sped on its way and they saw 
him no more. The wild tempest sank to a moderate 
breeze, the tossing waters stretched themselves out in a 
gentle swell. " The sea ceased from her raging." The 
effect upon the seamen was irresistible : " Then the men 
feared Jehovah exceedingly ; and they offered a sacrifice 
unto Jehovah, and made vows," It is not necessary to 



52 JESUS AND JONAH. 

suppose that they waited till they went ashore before 
they offered this sacrifice. They could frect an altir 
on the deck of the ship aud offer such victims as they 
had on board ; and, if neither their altar nor the vic- 
tim was such as the Mosaic law required, of • which 
they knew nothing, they could hope for acceptance. 
The vows they made were doubtless vows to serve 
Jehovah. 

Thus far the flight of Jonah has resulted in some 
good — in the conversion of these seamen to the worship 
of Jehovah. And did the good work stop with them ? 
Did they not tell the story in every seaport visited by 
their ship in its long voyage? Did not every one of 
them continue to tell the strange and glad story as long 
as he lived ? This ship's company, we may safely assert, 
were made missionaries to the heathen, preaching the 
true God in all the seaport* of the Mediterranean, and 
thus a light was kindled in the dark places of the 
western world. 

But leaving this part of the story, which grows on 
our imagination as we dwell upon it, we return to 
Jonah. When he was cast headforemost into the raging 
sea, he undoubtedly believed that it was a plunge into 
hell, for he was caught in the midst of his sin, and now 
he faces instant death. But he finds himself sliding 
down the cold throat of a great fish, of whose wide- 
spread jaws he barely caught a glimpse ere he passed 
within them. He is in the bowels of the fish, with 
every limb cramped as in a vice. He can not breathe, 
though he struggles for breath desperately. He suffers 
the pangs of the dying in every nerve and muscle. He 
realizes the plunge of the great animal into the deep 
wafers; he hears the scraping of seaweeds on its sides; 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 53 

and, as the fish, now full of pain and alarm caused by 
the struggles of a living man within him, rushes hither 
and thither in his fury, Jonah is conscious of all his 
movements. AVhat was his sense of time? He tells us, 
and in the Fame breath he reveals the anguish which his 
soul experienced. He exclaims : " The earth with her 
bars closed upon me forever. Out of the belly of Sheol 
I cried. " He expected every moment to be his last ; he 
was already suffering in body and mind the very 
torments of the damned; every slow moment as it 
passed appeared like years, every day like a cycle of 
eternity. 

Suddenly he feels the warm sun in his face. He 
opens his eyes. He sees the dry land around him, and 
down below is the sea. The fish is gone, and this 
seems to be the shore of his native land. How long he 
lay there before he acquired strength to rise and walk; 
whether he was found there in helpless weakness by 
some passerby, or made his way unassisted to some 
dwelling where he might procure food and drink, we 
are not informed. We are left equally in the dark as to 
how long it took him to get back to his home in Gath- 
hepher, and as to the way in which the news of his ad- 
venture was spread abroad. The remarkable reticence 
which characterizes all of the sacred records, and which 
distinguishes them from all fictitious writings, is strik- 
ingly prominent here. But now that the prophet has 
been delivered, and is restored to home and family for 
a time, we may pause and look back with the question, 
is this his mode of return incredible? 

We can not be mistaken in affirming that God, hav- 
ing formed the purp.se of bringing the Ninevites to 
repentance, was not to be defeated. Having selected 



54 JESUS AND JONAH. 

the man through whose preaching the good work was 
to be accomplished, he was not to be outwitted by that 
man. The runaway preacher must be brought back. 
God could have caused the wind to blow in such a 
direction as to force back the ship, or he could have 
seized Jonah by the hair of the head, and brought him 
back to Gath-hepher; but neither of these methods, nor 
any other that I can think of, would have been so wise 
as the one stated in the story. No other would have 
involved so complete a conversion of the heathen 
sailors; no other could have taught Jonah so good a 
lesson ; and none, except the second just mentioned, could 
have brought him back so quick. The fish ran faster 
than any ship afloat, and even the ocean racers of the pres- 
ent day would have been left by him far in the lurch. 
Jonah learned, and through his valuable experience 
millions have learned, that when God enjoins a disagree- 
able duty, it is far easier to go and do it than to run 
away from it. It was an act worthy then of Him who 
sees all things in all places, and who is ever-watchful to 
provide for all the foreseen generations of men the 
instruction which they need. The far-reaching effects 
of the event in the moral training of the world removes 
it as far as the east is from the west away from the cate- 
gory of idle wonders. And this is not all. We may 
safely say that if Jonah had gone to Nineveh when the 
word of Jehovah first came to him, his preaching would 
have been in vain ; for though he would have come as a 
great prophet, he would not have been " a sign to the 
Ninevites," in the sense in which our Lord, as we have 
seen, uses that expression ; and lacking this element of 
power, his mission would have been a failure. G n d 
knew this; for he knows all things. He knew that 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 55 

Jonah would run away as he did ; he intended from the 
beginning to bring him back as he did ; and all this was 
necessary to the effective execution of his benevolent 
purpose to save the Ninevites. From every possible 
point of view the whole scheme was worthy of God, 
and I confidently affirm that the story could not have 
been invented by man. No myth, no legend, in the 
whole range of human literature, can compare with it 
in all the elements which make it an incident worthy of 
divine interpositi >n. If any man doubts this assertion, let 
him select his example and present it for comparison. 

We are not informed how long Jonah remained at 
home before God spoke to him again ; and this is an- 
other example of the reticence quite unnatural to 
fiction, which characterizes this narrative. It may have 
been a day, a week, or a month ; but when the chosen 
moment came, God spoke to Jonah again. He says 
nothing about the first command, about the flight to 
Joppa, about the storm at sea, about the fish. He says, 
as if for the first time, "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that 
great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid 
thee." There is no flight or hesitation this time. 
" Jonah arose and went to Nineveh." Why this 
change ? Has he altered his opinion as to whether or 
not God will destroy the city? Is the distance to 
Nineveh any less than it was before ? Is the journey 
any less expensive or laborious? Ah, Jonah has learned 
the lesson of implicit obedience, the lesson of leaving 
all consequences with God. He goes to Nineveh. As 
he goes, I confess for my own part, that if the story of 
Jonah had closed here without another word, I would 
be constrained to regard it as one of the most valuable 
of all the episodes in the Old Testament. 



56 JESUS AND JONAH. 

When he began to cry out in the streets of Nineveh, 
" Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown," the 
quefction necessarily went from lip to lip, Who is this? 
The answer, that it was the great prophet of Israel, by 
whose supernatural foresight the victories of Jeroboam, 
running through a period of forty year-, had been won, 
was enough to arrest solemn attention ; but when it was 
added that on first receiving the command to come and 
utter this cry, he tried to escape the task by running 
away, and sailing far out upon the sea, but that Jehovah, 
who had given the command, overtook him, brought 
him back in the bowels of a fish, cast him out alive on 
dry land, and then renewed the command, this added 
tenfold power to the word of the prophet. The Nine- 
vites believed, proclaimed a fast, put on sack-cloth, 
turned every man from his evil way, and called might- 
ily on Jehovah, Is this incredible? I have tried to 
think what effect such a proclamation, by such a man, 
under such circumstances, would have in our modern 
society ; and I can think of only one class of persons 
who would probably not repent, and that is the class 
made up of men who have listened to the gospel for 
years and years, heard it in all its power, in all its ten- 
derness, and have so hardened their hearts by continued 
resistance to it, that nothing less than the thunders of 
the judgment day is likely to bring them to repentance. 
Men untrained to such resistance, as were the Ninevites, 
men who had never in their lives before been confronted 
with the outspoken wrath of the Almighty, could only 
tremble and repent and pray. The repentance of the 
Ninevites was natural. Most unnatural is the im- 
penitence of the gospel-hardened sinners of our own 
day. 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE f 57 

But the effect of Jonah's preaching could not, in the 
nature of things, be confined to the people of Nineveh. 
Throughout the Assyrian empire, and wherever on earth 
the name of Nineveh was known, the influence of her 
example must have been felt; and the revelations of 
eternity alone will enable us to know how much good 
was accomplished. It would not be strange if many 
souls unknown to fame, both in Nineveh and elsewhere, 
were brought to lasting repentance and finally to eternal 
life. Jonah was a great missionary to the heathen, and 
we may be sure that his work was not in vain. 

How Jonah ascertained that God " repented of the 
evil that he said he would do unto the Ninevites," we 
are not informed; and this is another instance of the 
reticence common to this and other books of the Bible. 
But when he did ascertain it he was angry ; and he gave 
vent to his anger by exclaiming : " O Jehovah, was not 
this my saying when I was yet in my own country? 
Therefore I hasted to flee unto Tarshish ; for I knew 
that thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion, 
slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest thee 
of the evil. Therefore now, O Jehovah, take, I 
beseech thee, my life fom me; for it is better for me to 
die than to live." God answered him, " Doest thou 
well to be angry ?" and here the interview ended. 
I One would have supposed that Jonah would return 
to his home, having accomplished the mission on which 
he was sent ; but instead of doing this, he " went out of 
the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there 
made him a booth, and sat finder it in the shadow, till 
he might see what would become of the city// Why 
had he any question as to what would become of the 
city, when God had repented of the evil which he said 



58 JESUS AND JONAH. 

he would do to it? I can think of no answer, unless it 
be that he had no confidence in the repentance of the 
Ninevites. They had been so desperately wicked that 
their sudden repentance appeared more like a spasm of 
fright than a genuine turning away from sin ; and he 
did not believe it would last. If it did not, if they 
turned back to their old ways, he knew very well that 
God would certainly bring upon them the doom which 
had been pronounced. What was to become of the 
city, then, depended upon the genuineness and the per- 
manency of the reformation which had been effected ; 
and Jonah, still wishing to see his prediction fulfilled, 
determines to await the result. He must wait till at 
least forty days expire, and possibly longer; but the 
presumption is that he intended to remain only through 
the forty days. 

Instead of taking up his temporary abode within 
the city walls, he chose a point of observation in the 
p^ain to the east, and probably it was the summit of 
some elevation from which he could have an extended 
view. The booth which he built was not to keep off the 
wind or the rain ; but to shelter him from the heat, 
which is very intense in that region during the hot 
season. It was not made of leaves, which would wilt 
and curl in a single day under such heat; but of sticks 
and small boards which he could pick up in the vicin- 
ity. It afforded a very imperfect shelter from the direct 
rays of the sun, and none from the reflected heat which 
rose from the surrounding sand. He suffered much, 
but God had pity on him, and " prepared a gourd, and 
made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a 
shadow over his head, to deliver him from his evil case." 
That gourd sprang up in a single night, so that it might 



IS THE STORY OF JONAS INCREDIBLE? 59 

appear, as it was, a special and miraculous gift from 
God. Jonah was " exceedingly glad because of the 
gourd." Doubtless it covered the whole of the shanty 
which had so imperfectly sheltered him, shutting out the 
side heat as well as the direct rays of the sun, and giv- 
ing him the full benefit of any breeze that might blow. 
But the relief lasted only one day. The next morning, 
God having prepared a worm that smote the gourd, 
when the sun became hot its leaves wilted, turned yel- 
low, curled up, and dropped off. When the heat of 
the day had come Jonah suffered more than ever. 
" The sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, 
and requested for himself that he might die." He wast 
now angry again ; and God said to him, " Doest thou 
well to be angry for the gourd ?" He said " I do well 
to be angry, even unto death." I suppose that he 
meant, he was so angry that it would kill him if he di<J 
not get relief. He does not claim to be angry with, 
God, or with the Ninevites, or with any person or thingi 
in particular. It was one of those fits of anger to whichi 
many persons are subject when suffering, and which 
makes them growl and snarl like a wild beast in pain. 

The opportunity had now come ; God had brought 
about the opportunity to teach Jonah the last lesson 
for which this series of events was projected. Had 
Nineveh been destroyed he would have gone home 
happy. His present misery was brought on in conse- 
quence of his desire to see it destroyed even yet. He 
was displeased with the mercy which God had mani- 
fested toward it, and refused to believe that this mercy 
would continue. So God says to him : " Thou hast had 
pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, 
neither madest it to grow ; which came up in a night, 



60 JESUS AND JONAH. 

and perished in a night : and should not I have pity on 
Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six 
score thousand persons that can not discern between 
their right hand and their left hand; and also much 
cattle?" 

What a rebuke for tjte unfeeling hostility of the 
prophet toward a vast p/pulation ; and what forgetful- 
ness it displayed on his part of the multitude of inno- 
cent babes who would have been swallowed up in the 
destruction which he desired to witness ! The rebuke 
was instantaneous; but what shall we say of the train 
of thought which it awoke in Jonah's mind never to 
cease while he lived? And when the knowledge of this 
last scene came to spread abroad in Israel, who can tell 
the good impression made on thoughtful minds, as day 
after day and year after year the thrilling story was told, 
and God's chosen people were made to realize that he 
was not their God only, but the God of the whole 
earth ? 

If now we review the whole story in the light of 
our reflections on it, we see that it represents God as 
desiring the repentance of the Ninevites, and of all in 
the proud empire of Assyria who could be influenced by 
their example. He selects as the preacher through 
whose word th ! s great reformation may be effected, the 
most renowned prophet of the age. Knowing in ad- 
vance that this prophet, great as he was, would be 
moved by his knowledge of God's goodness, and his 
own hatred of Nineveh, to run away from the task 
assigned him, God permits him to flee far out upon a 
stormy sea, that he might make him the means there of 
turning a company of heathen sailors to the true faith, 
and send them preaching round the shores of the 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 61 

western world, and that he might at the same time bring 
the prophet back better than ever prepared to do effective 
work in Nineveh. As a result of this preparation, the 
whole population of the great city is brought to 
repentance, and they appeal so earnestly to Jehovah for 
mercy that he spares them after having doomed them to 
destruction. We need no historian's pen to assure us 
that as far as Nineveh was known, the news of this 
thrilling experience traveled with the speed of the 
wind; and that an impression in favor of fearing and 
honoring Jehovah must have been made on every mind. 
What could have been more worthy of God than all 
this? Then, that he might send the prophet back to 
his countrymen with a new and kindlier sense of the 
brotherhood of man springing out of this universal 
Fatherhood of God, the weary waiting on the sand hill 
follows, and the whole story terminates with the tender 
lesson drawn from the magic shade which refreshed the 
suffering prophet. Is the story incredible? I think 
my readers are ready to answer, Not if any other 
miracles are credible. 

But there is another side to the question of incredibil- 
ity. If the story of Jonah is not history, it is, of course, 
a piece of fiction, and fiction which originated in the brain 
of an Israelite. Now I think it may be made to appear 
that the latter alternative is incredible. It is incredible, 
in the first place, that any Israelite, capable of conceiv- 
ing and of writing such a story, would be so irreverent 
toward one of the great prophets of his nation as to 
make him act the part ascribed to Jonah. And even if 
an intellectual Israelite had been so recreant to the 
ordinary trad : tions of his countrymen as to write such a 
story, it is still more incredible that the leaders of the 



62 JESUS AND JONAH. 

chosen people at any period of their history would have 
allowed such a document a place among their sacred 
books. There is nothing of the kind to be found else- 
where in the Bible, and such aspersions upon the names 
of prophets or patriarchs is not to be found in the apoc- 
ryphal literature of the Jews. On the contrary, the 
Jewish writings which are known to be fictitious are 
often characterized by extravagant eulogies of Biblical 
characters. 

This alternative is incredible, in the second pla^e, 
because no Israelite, inventing a story of God's dealings 
with a great Gentile city like Nineveh, would have rep- 
resented him as being so regardful of the welfare of its 
people, so quick to forgive their sins, and so tenderly 
mindful of the innocent within its walls. Especially 
would no Israelite write a story whose culminating 
point was a stern rebuke of his nation for animosity 
toward an oppressive heathen power. From this point 
of view, as well as from the other, such a book, if written 
as a fiction, would have so outraged the feeling of zeal- 
ous priests and scribes that it would never have obtained 
a place in the sacred canon. How can we imagine that 
a people who attempted to slay Jesus because he showed 
them that a Gentile woman and a Gentile warrior, in 
the days of Elijah and Elisha, honored these two prophets 
as no man or woman in Israel did or would, have per- 
mitted a book so full of rebuke for their hatred of the 
heathen to be made a part of their own Bible ? The 
thought is preposterous. Yet, this is the alternative to 
which those are driven who affirm that the story as told 
in the Scriptures is incredible. Like unbelievers in 
general, they take the harder side. 



IS THE STORY OF JONAH INCREDIBLE? 63 

This incredibility is intensified when we consider the 
date assigned to the Book of Jonah by those who hold 
it to be fictitious. According to Dr. Driver, as we have 
seen, it was written in the fifth century B. C, after the 
return from the Babylonian captivity. Nineveh, at that 
time, together with the Assyrian Empire of which it was 
the head, had long since perished; yet, this book, though 
dealing with its sins and its doom, gives not a hint of 
its final fate. This reticence, if the assumed date is the 
real one, could have been assumed by its author only 
for the purpose of making it appear that the book was 
written before Nineveh's fall; and it was, therefore, a 
piece of deception. As Nineveh had not only perished 
at this date, but had, between the time of Jonah and the 
time of its downfall, carried into captivity the ten tribes 
of Israel, and visited upon them unspeakable cruelties, 
a Jew of a later age would be the last man on earth to 
invent a story showing tender regard for it on the part 
of Israel's God. Furthermore, at the supposed date of 
composition, the whole of the twelve tribes, with the 
single exception of the remnant who had returned to 
Jerusalem, were being ground under the heel of heathen 
oppression, and were learning to hate the ways of the 
oppressors more and more with every passing day. In 
no former period in Israel's history was it so improbable 
that such a book could be written by an Israelite, or 
that, if written, it would be received with any feeling 
but abhorrence by his countrymen. In other words, 
the farther down the stream of time you bring the date 
of the book, the more incredible it is that any Jewish 
writer would have invented its story, and the more in- 
credible that it could have obtained the place which we 
know it did obtain ia the sacred writings of the Jews. 



64 JESUS AND JONAH. 

To br'ng the matter nearer home, let us suppose that 
some ingenious writer should now publish a volume 
containing aspersions upon the character of one of the 
leading generals or statesmen of our revolutionary war, 
and rebuking severely as unjust and cruel the feeling of 
the American patriots toward their British foes; and 
suppose that, by common consent of this generation of 
Americans, these sentiments should come to be incorpo- 
rated in the standard histories of the United States. 
This would be a state of things not one whit more in- 
credible, not to say impossible, than the theory that the 
Book of Jonah is a fictitious narrative written by an 
uninspired author in an age of Jewish subjection to a 
heathen power. 

Finally, when we add to the incredibility of the 
theory that this book is a fiction, the solemn assertion 
by Jesus that its leading incidents are real transactions, 
we can safely conclude this protracted discussion with 
the affirmation, that none of the supernatural events 
recorded in the Old Testament are supported by stronger 
evidence of authenticity than those recorded in the 
Book of Jonah, 



. IV. THE THREE DAYS AND THREE 
NIGHTS. 

The words of Jesus, "As Jonah was three days and 
three nights in the bowels of the sea monster, so shall 
the Son of man be three days and three nights in the 
heart of the earth/' are very puzzling to many modern 
readers because of their apparent inconsistency with the 
accounts given elsewhere of the time between his death 
and his resurrection. That he was buried on Friday 
evening, and that he arose on Sunday morning, is so 
clearly set forth in the Gospel narratives, and so gener- 
ally accepted as true, that it must be acknowledged as a 
settled fact. But this is totally irreconcilable with the 
statement that he was three days and three nights in the 
heart of the earth, if the latter is to be understood in 
the sense now attached to the words. Some scholars 
have thought the contradiction to be real, and have for 
this reason thought that the verse containing the words 
ascribed to Jesus are an interpolation in Matthew's 
Gospel ; while others have been driven to novel theories 
as to the time Jesus spent in the tomb. Many attempts 
have been made to show that there is no real contradic- 
tion ; but the most of these have proved unsatisfactory. 
It is the purpose of this essay to make another such 
attempt, and I trust that the reader will find it sup- 
ported by competent and sufficient evidence. 

The contradiction between the statement made and 
the facts recorded is so palpable from the point of view 

65 



66 JESUS AND JONAH. 

of our English usage, that if the two are harmonious 
the harmony must be found in some peculiar usage of 
Hebrew writers and speakers — a usage by which the ex- 
pression three days and three nights is the equivalent of 
a small part of one day, all of the next, and a part of 
the third. S'^ch usage would appear very strange to us, 
but if it really existed among the Hebrews its strange- 
ness can not nullify it. Its existence must not be 
assumed in order to get rid of a difficulty of interpre- 
tation ; it mufet be demonstrated independently of the 
passage in which the difficulty is found. Can this 
be done? 

It was the invariable custom of Hebrew writers to 
count a fraction of a year, or a day, at the beginning of 
a series and at the end of it, as each a year, or a day. 
This can be demonstrated by many examples, and espe- 
cially by the parallel numbers recorded in the Books of 
Kings. Abijam began to reign over Judah in the 
eighteenth year of Jeroboam ; he reigned three years, 
and yet he died in the twentieth year of Jeroboam (I. 
Kings xv. 1, 2, 8, 9). Evidently the three years are 
made up by a part of Jeroboam's eighteenth, all of his 
nineteenth, and a part of his twentieth. Nadab began to 
reign over Israel in the second year of Asa, and reignod 
two years, yet he died in the third year of Asa (xv. 25, 
28). His two years were a part of Asa's second, and a 
part of his third ; and they may have been not more 
than one whole year. In the same third year of Asa, 
Baasha began to reign, and reigned twenty-four years, 
yet he died in the twenty- sixth year of Asa, one year 
too soon in our mode of counting (xv. 33; xvi. 6, 8). 
Elah began in the twenty-sixth year of Asa, reigned two 
yiars, and died in the twenty-seventh of Asa (8-10). 



THE THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS. 67 

This method is pursued till the fall of the northern King- 
dom without variation ; and the consequence is, that 
in estimating the duration of the two kingdoms of 
Israel and Judah by the regnal years of their kings, it 
is necessary to deduct at least half a year from the given 
number of every one who reigned more than one year. 
Even then the result is in some degree uncertain ; for we 
can never know what part of a year is counted in indi- 
vidual instances, as a year. To this extent Hebrew 
chronology is uncertain, though the uncertainty is con- 
fined within narrow limits. 

That the same custom prevailed in regard to days is 
proved by a large number of examples. Joseph put 
his brothers " into ward three days"; yet he released 
them "the third day" (Gen. xfii. 17, 18). By our 
count he. would have released them the fourth day. 
Rehoboam said to the people who had petitioned him to 
make their burdens lighter, " Depart yet three days, then 
come again to me "; yet the historian says, " Jeroboam 
and all the people came to Rehoboam, the third day 
as the king bade, saying, Come to me again the third 
day." Here it is clear that a part of the day in which 
he dismissed them, all of the next day, and the early 
part of the day in which they came back to him, make 
up the three days; yet there were probably less than 
two days according to our mode of counting. Esther 
sent word to Mordecai, " Go gather together all the 
Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and 
neither eat nor drink three days, night or day ; I also 
and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I 
go in unto the king"; yet she went in on the third day 
(Esth. iv. 16; v. 1). Here are three examples taken 
from the Old Testament. There are others in the new. 



G8 JESUS AND JONAH. 

Cornelius said to Peter, " Four days ago, until this hour, 
I was keeping the ninth hour of prayer in my house "; 
yet if we count from the time of his prayer as stated in 
the beginning of the story, we find that it was exactly 
three days according to our mode of counting. He was 
praying in the afternoon at the ninth hour when the 
angel appeared to him (Acts x. 3) ; he immediately 
started the soldier and the two servants for Peter (7, 8) ; 
they reached the house where Peter was lodging the 
next day at noon (9) not quite one day after the vision ; 
Peter has them to stay all night, and the next day they 
all start for Gesarea (23) ; and on the next day at the 
ninth hour they meet Cornelius (24, 30). In order to 
make the four days, he counted less than three hours of 
the first day, the whole of the second and third, and 
nine hours of the fourth. In this instance we have to 
deduct exactly twenty-four hours from the number of 
days given in order to have the exact number. Again, 
the chief priests and the Pharisees, after the burial of 
Jesus, say to Pilate, " We remember that that deceiver 
said while he was yet with us, After three days I will 
rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulcher be 
made sure until the third day ,; (Matt, xxvii. 63, 64). 
Why say "till the third day," if he was to rise after 
three days? We would have said, till the fourth day; 
f.ir if he was to rise after three days it would not be 
earlier than the fourth day, though it might be later. 
Evidently they understood the time included in the ex- 
pression after three days as terminating on the third day. 
And as Jesus had been buried near the close of a day, 
and they expected him to rise, if at all, on the third 
day, they must have counted the small fraction of a day 
that remained after his burial as one of the three days. 



THE THREE DA YS AXD THREE NIGHTS. 69 

Their expression, u till the third day," also shows that 
they expected him to rise before the third day would 
end, and that they therefore count a part of that day 
as a day. 

Finally, Jesus himself has the same usage in his own 
references to the time between his death and his resur- 
rection; for he at one time says that he would rise on 
the third day, and at others, that he would rise after 
three days. See Mark viii. 31 ; ix. 31; x. 34, for the 
latter; and Matt, xvi. 21; xvii. 23; xx. 19; Luke ix. 
22; xviii. 33; xxiv. 7, 46, for the former. 

Now of the passages cited, it is only those in Mark 
which contain the words, "after three days"; while the 
parallels in Matthew and Luke have the words, " the 
third day." If we understand that Jesus in every 
instance used the words given in Matthew and Luke, 
then we must understand that Mark construes his ex- 
pression "on the third day," as the equivalent of "after 
three days." And on the other hand, if the expression 
which Mark has is the literal quotation from Jesus, then 
Matthew and Luke give "on the third day" as the 
equivalent of that. The Pharisees, as we have seen, 
understand him as saying, or at least as meaning, that he 
would rise "after three days"; for such is their expres- 
sion in addressing Pilate (Matt, xxvii. 63). 

AVe are now prepared to consider the particular words 
of Jesus which are under discussion — "The Son of man 
shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the 
earth." We have seen that " after three days," and " on 
the third day," were equivalents with him and with his 
contemporaries; but after three days is actually after 
three days and three nights. To make this very simple, 
if you begin to count on Monday morning, after one 



70 JESUS AND JONAH. 

day would bring you to Tuesday morning; after two 
days brings you to Wednesday morning; and after three 
days brings you to Thursday morning; but in passing 
over three days you have also passed over three nights, 
viz , Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday 
night If, then, Jesus could at one time say in strict 
compliance with Jewish usage, that he would rise after 
three days, he could with precisely the same meaning 
say that he would be in the grave three days and three 
nights. Neither assertion would be true according to 
modern usage, but both would be strictly true according 
to the usage of the Hebrews. 

This conclusion is confirmed by another considera- 
tion. It is this — that when Jewish writers wished to 
be exact in the use of the cardinal numbers for years, 
months, etc., they used the qualifying term full, or 
whole, before the substantive. Thus a law in Leviticus 
provided that if a house in a walk d city were sold, the 
owner might redeem it " within a whole year after it is 
sold; for a full year shall he have the right of redemp- 
tion" (xxv. 29), It was after "two full years" that 
Absalom took revenge on Amnon, and when he 
returned from banishment on account of slaying Amnon, 
he dwelt "two full years" in Jerusalem before he saw 
the king's face. Zedekiah, the fal^e prophet, said that the 
vessels of the house of the Lord, which had been carried 
to Babylon, would be brought back within "two full 
y ars " (Jer. xxvii. 3). Stephen says that Moses was 
"full forty years old" when he slew the Egyptian and 
fled. Luke says that Barnabas and Saul remained with 
the church at Antioch "a whole year," and that Paul 
dwelt in his own hired house in Rome "two whole 
years." In view of this usage we can see that if Jeeus 



THE THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS. 71 

had meant that he would be in the heart of the earth 
three days and three nights as we understand the words, 
he would have said three full days and nghts ; or if he 
had meant what we mean by " after three days," he 
would have said, After three full days, or three whole 
days. 

If it shall still appear to any one that such a usage 
is so far from accuracy of expression as to be somewhat 
incredible, let him consider some usages of our own, 
which, though not the same, are analogous. Suppose 
that a freshly landed Chinaman were to employ an 
American laborer for a month, agreeing to pay him 
twenty dollars. At the end of the month the man 
claims his wages, though he has labored only twenty-six 
days. The Chinaman would think himself cheated out 
of four days' labor until he was informed that according 
to American usage a month's labor is not counted at 
thirty days, but at only twenty-six. Or suppose that he 
sends his son to an American school which begins the 
first day of March and is to continue five months. The 
Chinaman counts the time, and expects his son to receive 
instruction to the end of July, which would be twenty- 
one weeks and six days. But at the end of twenty 
weeks the tuition fee is demanded, and he thinks that he 
has been cheated out of two weeks, until he learns that 
in American school parlance a month, which he counted 
as sometimes thirty days, and sometimes as thirty-one, is 
only four weeks. But worse still, he finds upon careful 
count that there were two days in every week of the 
twenty in which his son was not taught; and thus the 
twenty-one weeks and six days for which he thought he 
wa* contracting, has been reduced to just one hundred 
days, or fourteen weeks and two days. He thinks that 



72 JESUS AND JON AIL 

these Americans have a very strange way of counting 
time, and he is right in so thinking; yet we go on 
counting this way without stopping to think how strange 
it is. So it was with the Jews in their method, and in 
reality their method did not involve so many and so 
great inaccuracies as our own. This consideration 
should silence all cavilling about the method of the 
Jews, and about the apparently inconsistent statements 
with reference to the time that our Lord spent in 
Joseph's tomb. 



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